THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


NED  ARDEN  FLOOD, 
MEADVILLE,    PA. 


THOMrSON.  Robert  Ellis,  oducator,  b.  in 
Lurgaii.  Jri'laiiii.  in  the  spring  of  1844.  Coming  to 
this  nmiitry  in  iiis  tliirteenth  yciir,  lio  settled  with 
his  jiarents  in  Phihidoliiliia,  and.  entering  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania,  was  graduated  in  18(55, 
and  in  1808  received  the  degree  of  A.  M.  In  1867 
he  was  licensed  to  preach  by  tlie  Reformed  presby- 
tery of  Philadelphia,  and  in  1868  was  chosen  pro- 
fessor of  Latin  tiiid  mathematics  in  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania.  He  became  {jrofessor  of  social 
science  in  1871,  and  in  1S81  jjrofessor  of  history 
and  English  literature,  wliich  chair  he  still  holds. 
Since  1870  he  has  given  instruction  in  political 
economy,  and  he  is  well  known  as  an  advocate  of 
protection  to  home  industry.  In  1884-'5  he  lec- 
tured at  Harvard  on  ))rotection  and  the  tariff,  and 
in  1886-"7  he  delivered  a  similar  course  at  Yale. 
In  1870  lie  became  editor  of  the  "  Penn  Monthly," 
then  newly  established,  and  continued  such  for  ten 
years.  In  1880  a  weekly  supi)lement  of  notes  on 
current  events  was  Ijegun,  which  in  October  of  that 
year  was  expanded  into  "The  American,"  a  weekly 
journal  of  literature,  science,  the  arts,  and  public 
affairs,  which  is  still  puldished  in  Philadelphia  un- 
der his  editorship.  In  188;i-"i)  he  edited  the  first 
two  volumes  of  the  "Encyclopaedia  Aiuericana,"  a 
supjilcment  to  the  ninth  edition  of  the  "  Encyclo- 
pa-dia  Britannica,"  but,  his  health  failing,  he  was 
obliged  to  resign  the  remaining  two  volumes  to 
other  hands.  In  1870  Hamilton  college  conferred 
on  him  the  degree  of  Ph.  I).,  and  in  1887  he  re- 
ceived that  of  S.  T.  I),  fromtiie  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania. Prof.  Thom[)S(in  is  the  aut  lior  of  "  Social 
Science  and  Natioiuii  Economy"  (Philadeljihia, 
1875  :  revised  ed.,  1876  ;  partly  rewritten,  under  the 
title  of  "  Elements  of  Political  Economy,"  1882), 
and  "  Protection  to  Home  Industry,"  his  Harvard 
lectures  (New  York,  1886). 


PROTECTION 


HOME    INDUSTRY 


FOUR  LECTURES 

DELIVERED    IN    HARVARD    UNIVERSITV,    JANUARY,    1885 


REV.  ROBERT  ELLIS  THOMPSON,  A.M. 

FKOFKSSOR    IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OK   PENNSYLVANIA 


NEW  YORK 
D.    APPLETON   &   COMPANY 

I,  3  AND  5  Bond  Street 
1886 


COPYRIGHT,    1 886,  BY 

RoRERT   Ellis  Thompson. 


GRANT   f;    I'AIRES, 
PllILAUliLI'lllA. 


PREFACE. 


These  Lectures  were  delivered  at  Harvard  at  the  instance 
of  the  Corporation  and  Overseers  of  the  University,  who  did 
me  the  honor  to  appoint  me  Lecturer  on  Protective  Tariffs  for 
the  year  1S84-5,  ^^''th  the  duty  of  dehvering  four  lectures  on 
that  subject.  I  desire  to  acknowledge  the  courtesy  with  which 
President  Eliot  and  his  colleagues  in  the  Faculty  permitted  me 
to  make  such  an  arrangement  as  would  least  interfere  with  my 
duties  at  home,  and  the  kindness  which  made  my  stay  at  Cam- 
bridge one  of  the  pleasantest  experiences  of  my  life.  I  also 
have  to  thank  my  colleagues  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
for  their  assumption  of  much  of  my  work  in  my  absence. 

In  preparing  these  lectures  for  the  press,  I  have  followed  my 
notes  of  preparation,  rather  than  my  recollection  of  what  I 
found  time  to  say  in  the  hour's  space  assigned  for  each  lecture. 
The  second  lecture  in  particular  greatly  exceeds  what  could  be 
delivered  in  that  space  of  time.  In  the  third  lecture  I  have 
changed  the  mode  of  presenting  the  main  point,  in  accordance 
with  suggestions  derived  from  a  conference  with  a  very  intelli- 
gent young  gentleman  who  discussed  the  matter  with  me  after- 
wards in  the  rooms  of  my  host,  Prof.  Palmer.  But  the  lectures 
are  substantially  what  1  delivered  to  the  evening  audiences  in 
Sevier  Hall. 

Philadelphi.a,  JauiiLvy  4//1,  18S6. 


CONTENTS. 

I.     GENERAL   PRINCIPLES— THE   FARMER, i 

II.     THE   EVIDENCE   OF   HISTORY 22 

III.  THE   WORKINGMAN, 59 

IV.  ANSWERS   TO   OBJECTIONS 83 


I. 

GENERAL  PRINCIPLES— THE  FARMER. 


Gcntlcvien  of  the  University  : — 

I  KNOW  of  nothing  more  admirable  in  the  public  life 
of  the  English  people  than  the  possession  of  a  great 
body  of  agreements  in  advance  of  all  partizan  dissen- 
sion. However  Tory  and  Radical  may  differ  as  to  the 
present  policy  of  the  Empire,  they  are  agreed  upon 
general  principles  to  an  extent,  that  enables  them  to 
discuss  their  difference  without  losing  their  heads,  or 
forgetting  that  they  both  are  Englishmen.  They 
agree  first  of  all  that  the  honor  and  welfare  of  Pmg- 
land  is  to  be  the  primary  object  of  all  their  delibera- 
tions and  efforts.  They  are  agreed  that  all  solutions 
of  present  difficulties  shall  be  within  the  lines  of  those 
great  political  traditions,  which  make  up  the  British 
Constitution.  And  they  are  agreed  that  English 
questions  shall  be  settled  by  English  \'otes  and 
voices,  without  foreign  interference  from  any  quarter. 
So  long  as  English  parties  conduct  their  controversies 
within  these  bounds,  and  with  this  common  ground  of 
mutual  understanding  under  their  feet,  England  will 
be  a  great  nation,  capable  of  sustaining  the  shocks  of 
adverse  fortune,  and  of  passing  without  break  of  her 
historic  continuity  through  any  change  that  n"!ay  be 
demanded  by  the  new  conditions  of  new  times. 

I 


2  UXIVEKSITY  LECTURES. 

It  is  my  hope  that  as  Americans  we  shall  always 
seek  to  appropriate  this  wisdom  in  the  conduct  of  our 
controversies.  It  is  our  duty  to  consider  our  agree- 
ments before  entering  upon  the  discussion  of  our 
differences.  I  shall  seek  to  do  so  to-night,  in  making 
a  beginning  of  what  I  have  to  say  on  this  controversy 
between  Free  Trade  and  Protection,  not  more  for  the 
sake  of  showing  where  our  agreements  come  to  an 
end,  than  of  cultivating  that  spirit  which  hel{)s  to  keep 
all  such  discussions  from  degenerating  into  mere 
scolding  of  either  party  by  the  other. 

First  of  all,  then,  I  shall  assume  that  we  are  of  one 
mind  in  desiring  without  any  reserves  the  welfare  of 
our  common  country.  Whatever  duties  we  owe  to 
mankind  at  large,  we  are  Americans  in  the  first  place, 
and  are  put  in  trust  with  each  others'  welfare  and 
growth  in  all  noble  directions,  as  with  those  of  no 
other  people.  And  while  we  desire  for  our  country 
nothing  that  we  do  not  wish  for  every  other,  and  have 
no  wish  that  she  should  pro.spcr  at  the  expense  of  any 
other,  we  all  believe  that  our  first  thought  should  be 
given  to  this  dear  land  of  our  birth  or  of  our  adoption, 
with  a  love  as  passionate  as  that  of  the  Hebrew  exile, 
who  sang  by  the  rivers  of  Babylon  :  "  If  I  forget  thee, 
O  Jeru.salem,  let  my  right  hand  forget  its  cunning,  and 
let  my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth  ! " 

In  the  second  place,  we  are  agreed  that  the  inter- 
ference of  government  with  the  processes  of  industrial 
development  never  can  be  anything  more  or  better 
than  a  necessary  evil.  We  should  seek  to  do  without 
that  interference  as  far  as  may  be,  and  should  leave  as 
much  as  possible  to  the  enterprise,  the  forethought  and 
the  initiative  of  individuals.     We  should  minimize  the 


GENERAL  PRIXCIPLES.  3 

action  of  the  state  on  the  industrial  hfe  of  the  nation 
to   the   utmost,  and    should    avoid    paternal  meddle- 
someness.      For    the    great    laws    which   govern    the 
industrial  growth,  are  laws  of  nature,  and  therefore,  as 
Burke  says, "  laws  of  God."     There  is  a  "  constitution 
and  course  of   nature  "   in  economic  matters,  to   use 
Bishop    Butler's    expression.       The    business    of    the 
economist  is  to  discover  its  laws,  and  that  of  the  statesman 
to  remove  all  hindrances  to  their  free  operation.     It 
never  can  be  the  business  of  either  to  set  them   aside, 
or  to  devise  a  substitute  for  them.     It  is  impossible  to 
improve  upon  them,  and  nothing  but  harm  will  come 
of  trying.     When  the  statesman  attempts  more  than 
the  removal  of  obstacles,  he  can  only  cramp  industrial 
growth,  cause  deterioration  of  national  character,  and 
waste  the  human  effort  he  thinks  to  make  more  efficient. 
Now  this  may  sound  strange  to  you  as  coming  from 
a  Protectionist.     But  my  conviction  of  its  truth  is  deeper 
and    higher  than   m\^   belief   in  the   wisdom   of   any 
measure    of   practical  policy.     I  especially  value  the 
writings  of  our  American  economist,  Henry  C.  Carey, 
because  of  the  ability  and  earnestness  with  which  he 
vindicated  this  great  truth.     It  underlies  all  he  wrote 
and  taught  in  Political   Economy.     It  is  the  basis  of 
both  his  earlier  works,  in  which  he  still  advocated  the 
Free  Trade  theory,  and  of  those  of  his  later  years,  in 
which    he    advocated    the    Protectionist   policy.      He 
believed  that  an  economic  science  was  possible,  because 
he  believed  in  an  established  economic  order,  whose 
laws  express  to  us  the  beneficent  will  of  God.     He 
held  that  wherever  the  laws  of  this  order  were  allowed 
free  scope,  there  wealth  would  tend   to  diffuse  itself 
among  all  classes,  instead  of  accumulating  in  the  hands 


4  UXIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

of  the  few  ;  that  there  the  laborer  would  obtain  an 
ever  increasing  share  of  the  joint  earnings  of  labor 
and  capital  ;  that  there  the  tenant  would  pay  a  steadily- 
diminishing  share  of  his  harvest  for  the  use  of  the 
land  ;  that  there  men  would  grow  in  the  command  of 
the  necessities  and  even  the  luxuries  of  life.  Or,  as  he 
sums  up  all  in  one  sentence,  "  men  would  pass  from 
what  is  worse  to  what  is  better  in  land,  in  labor  and 
in  food."  And  on  the  other  hand  he  teaches  that 
wherever  the  poverty  of  the  savage  still  perpetuates 
itself  in  the  bosom  of  civilization,  and  great  masses  of 
wealth  accumulate  alongside  deepening  wretchedness, 
there  there  has  been  some  obstacle,  some  resistance  to 
the  workings  of  the  laws  of  this  beneficent  order. 

Thirdly,  I  hope  we  are  all  agreed  with  Adam  Smith, 
that  this  natural  order  of  economic  growth  realizes 
itself  in  the  balanced  development  of  the  three  great 
industries  within  the  state, — the  farmer  and  the  artizan 
in  neighborhood  with  each  other,  and  the  trader  serving 
both  by  facilitating  their  exchanges,  while  he  is  the 
master  of  neither.  This  I  shall  assume  is  the  ideal  we 
cherish  for  our  own  country.  We  none  of  us  wish  to 
see  it  reduced  to  the  industrial  level  of  an  Ireland  or  a 
New  Zealand,  or  think  the  cowboy  the  industrial  t}'pe 
we  should  chiefly  cultivate.  However  lovely  the 
pictures  the  poets  have  drawn  of  the  pastoral  or  the 
bucolic  life,  we  are  not  content  with  that  for  ourseh-es. 
\V'e  love,  as  did  M.  Thiers,  to  ".see  the  tall  chimneys 
smoking,"  and  to  see  gathered  within  the  bounds  of  the 
commonwealth  that  various  industrial  life  which  inter- 
laces the  lives  of  men  in  mutual  need  and  mutual  help. 

In  the  phrase  of  the  modern  sociologist,  we  desire 
for  our  people  that  large  diversification  of  industrial 


GENERAL  PRINCIPLES.  5 

function,  which  will  mark  their  industrial  life  as  taking 
a  high  rank.  Wc  do  not  desire  that  simplicity  of  type 
and  function  which  belongs  to  a  low  and  rudimentary 
stage  of  existence.  And  this  we  are  agreed  is  to  be 
the  outcome  of  the  natural  growth  of  society  on  the 
lines  marked  out  by  the  laws  of  the  economic  order. 
Just  as  the  upward  sweep  from  lichen  to  oak,  or  from 
bathybius  to  man,  is  through  the  operation  of  natural 
law  in  the  field  of  biology,  so  the  movement  that 
carries  society  forward  from  the  predatory  to  the 
pastoral  stage,  from  the  pastoral  to  the  agricultural, 
and  from  the  merely  agricultural  to  the  complex 
industrial  life  of  civilized  society,  is  the  outcome  of 
a  "  constitution  and  course  of  nature  "  in  things  eco- 
nomical. 

We  are  of  one  mind  then  as  to  (i)  the  loving  regard 
we  owe  to  our  own  country  ;  (2)  the  existence  of  an 
industrial  order,  whose  laws  we  are  to  obey,  and  not 
to  improve  or  supersede  ;  and  (3)  the  necessity  of  the 
three  great  industries  in  something  like  a  balanced 
development  to  the  prosperity  of  a  well-ordered  and 
civilized  community.  But  this  brings  us  to  the  parting 
of  the  ways.  I  do  not  know  of  another  step  we  can 
take  together,  or  I  should  be  glad  to  point  it  out. 

The  point  at  which  the  two  schools  come  to  a 
distinct  disagreement  is  just  this  :  Wliat  arc  those 
artificial  liindranccs  to  the  operation  of  natural  laze, 
zuhich  it  is  the  right  and  the  dnty  of  the  state  to  remove  ? 

There  are  some  hindrances  that  present  no  sort  of 
difficulty  and  cause  no  disagreement.  When  the 
Philistines  forbid  the  Israelites  to  have  the  trade  of  the 
smith  among  them,  and  require  every  man  of  them  to 
come    down   to    Philistia   if    he  is    to    have    his  tool 


6  LWIVEKSIjy  LECTURES. 

sharpened,  we  are  agreed  as  to  what  that  means  and 
what  the  rights  of  the  IsraeUtes  are.  When  England 
forbids  her  American  colonies  to  set  up  mills  for  the 
slitting  of  steel,  and  crushes  out  the  Irish  woolen 
industry  by  hostile  legislation,  we  are  again  of  the 
same  mind.  We  all  see  that  these  measures  of  the 
sword  or  of  the  law-book  are  taken  to  prevent  that 
industrial  growth  to  which  the  subject  and  dependent 
countries  otherwise  would  attain.  And  we  hold  that 
such  acts  justify  resistance  by  the  sword. 

Now  Protectionists  maintain  that,  without  the  use  of 
either  political  authority  or  military  force,  nations  of 
greater  wealth  and  more  developed  industry  can  put 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  natural  growth  of  poorer 
and  more  backward  countries.  And  they  contend  that 
this  exercise  of  what  Burke  calls  "  the  tyrannous 
power  of  capital  "  is  as  much  a  hindrance  to  be  removed 
by  the  collective  action  of  the  weaker  nation,  as  was 
the  prohibition  laid  by  the  Philistines  on  the  children 
of  Israel,  or  those  laid  by  England  last  century  on 
Ireland  and  her  colonies.  And  they  hold  that  laws 
enacted  to  remove  such  a  hindrance  are  not  attempts 
to  interfere  with  the  natural  course  and  order  of  things, 
but  are  a  right  and  natural  resistance  to  what  is  wrong 
and  unnatural. 

At  the  same  time  Protectionists  deny  that  there  is 
any  need  for  collision  between  the  weaker  and  the 
stronger  nation,  or  that  a  collision  comes  of  necessity 
from  the  growth  of  either  in  wealth  or  industrial 
power.  So  long  as  a  nation's  growth  is  normal, — so 
long  as  it  embodies  itself  in  the  balanced  development 
of  its  own  industries,  its  agriculture  and  manufactures 
standing  in  due  proportion  to  each  other  and  both  to 


GENERA  L  rRINCIPL  ES. 


7 


commerce, — its  advance  will  be  helpful  as  a  stimulus, 
an  inspiration  and  an  example  to  other  countries.  It 
is  only  when  a  false  ambition  has  led  it  to  destroy  the 
balance  of  the  industries  at  home,  and  to  give  an 
undue  attention  to  those  which  it  thinks  the  more 
profitable  to  itself,  that  it  comes  to  seek  that  others 
may  be  held  in  a  kind  of  industrial  subjection  and 
dependence  upon  itself 

The  play  of  national  ambitions  makes  up  a  great 
part  of  the  world's  history.  These  ambitions  give 
direction  to  the  development  of  national  life  more 
powerfully  than  laws  could  do.  In  this  "  industrial 
age  "  of  the  world's  story,  these  ambitions  very  natu- 
rally take  an  industrial  shape.  The  conflict  for 
existence  and  for  permanence  is  a  conflict  for  markets. 
The  most  important  battles  of  our  time  are  those  in 
which  no  shot  is  fired  and  no  sword  is  drawn.  They 
are  fought  with  the  purse  and  the  yard-stick.  And 
just  as  the  old  political  ambitions  led  and  still  lead 
nations  to  seek  an  imperial  position  by  the  annexation 
of  territories  and  the  destruction  of  governments,  so 
the  new  ambitions  cause  wealthy  and  powerful  countries 
to  add  other  lands  by  unfair  means  to  their  industrial 
area.  To  this  end  capital  and  skill  are  regarded  as 
"weapons  of  industrial  warfare"  to  crush  out  weaker 
and  less  established  capitalists,  and  to  reduce  whole 
countries  to  the  level  of  an  insufficient  and  uniform 
employment.  These  conquests  of  the  purse  and  the 
yard-stick  are  not  less  important  or  less  cruel  than 
those  of  the  sword,  and  indeed  they  are  the  most 
constant  provocation  to  wars  of  the  better  recognized 
type.  Sir  William  Napier,  the  great  military  historian, 
says  the  history  of  modern  warfare  is  that  "  political  and 


8  I  -x/ 1  'EKsm  ■  L  Ecri  'res. 

commercial  men  they  are  who  always  have  recourse 
to  the  sword.  They  declare  war,  and  generally  for 
commercial  interests." ' 

To  prevent  such  conquests, — to  secure  to  the  country 
that  industrial  independence  which  is  the  complement 
of  political  independence, — we  have  Protective  Tariffs. 

Such  Tariffs  are  based,  first  of  all,  on  a  view  of  what 
the  resources  and  climate  of  the  country  suggest  can 
be  produced  at  home.  It  is  not  proposed  to  grow 
pine-apples  in  Minnesota,  or  to  commit  any  other  of 
the  absurdities  Free  Traders  kindly  suggest  as  worth 
our  undertaking.  We  believe  that  the  highest  wisdom 
has  divided  the  area  of  the  earth's  surface  into  portions, 
each  of  which  is  designated  by  its  natural  boundaries 
as  the  home  of  a  separate  nation.  And  we  believe  that 
He  who  has  thus  "  fixed  the  bounds  of  the  nations  "  has 
given  to  each  of  them  such  natural  resources  as  would 
enable  its  people  to  become  independent  of  all  others 
for  the  great  staples  of  necessary  use. 

Protective  Tariffs,  in  the  next  place,  have  regard  to 
the  difference  of  popular  capacity  and  industrial  am- 
bition in  each  country,  and  they  aim  at  giving  full 
scope  to  that  capacity.  They  do  not  measure  it  by 
what  the  nation  has  done  already,  lest, — as  Lord  Bacon 
says, — "by  under\aluing  their  forces,  they  descend  to 
pusillanimous  counsels."  A  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago  England  had  not  produced  an  artist  above  the 
level  of  a  sign-painter.  Since  Hogarth  made  a  be- 
ginning, she  has  done  better.  Seventy  years  ago  the 
United  States  had  given  but  little  reason  to  believe 
that  its  people  possessed  any  special  capacity  for  in- 

'  Letter  of  Sir  W.  Nai^ier  to  Mr.  Samuel  Ciurney,  Nov.  21,  1S51. 


GENERAL   FRLNCIPLES.  9 

vention  or  the  management  of  the  industrial  arts. 
Whitney  and  Evans  filled  up  the  short  list  of  our  in- 
ventors ;  and  an  Englishman  defied  us  fight  his  country 
on  the  ground  that  if  left  to  ourselves  we  "could  not 
make  so  much  as  a  mouse-trap"  for  ourselves  !  The 
collections  at  the  Patent-Office  tell  a  somewhat  differ- 
ent story  now.  Protection  is  the  policy  of  a  nation 
that  believes  in  its  own  undeveloped  capacities,  and 
looks  to  the  future. 

Protective  Tariffs  seek  to  adjust  popular  production 
to  national  demand.  America  is  an  exceptional  coun- 
try in  this  respect.  In  one  sense  it  is  a  young  country, 
making  its  start  in  life.  But  if  you  look  at  the  elements 
which  make  up  its  population,  you  will  see  that  each 
of  them  is  the  product  of  a  long  development  in  civil- 
ization, which  has  given  them  wants  and  desires  as 
well  developed  as  in  any  other  body  of  people.  We 
are  made  up  of  very  old  families,  with  and  without 
pedigrees ;  and  our  notions  of  what  we  must  have  are 
the  notions  of  old  families.  We  must  have  glass  in 
the  windows,  paper  on  the  walls,  china  on  the  table, 
carpets  on  the  floors,  presentable  furniture  in  our 
chambers,  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  civilized  life  on 
the  v^ery  outfront  of  civilization's  onward  march.  We 
are  full  fledged  citizens,  with  all  the  results  of  Europe 
in  our  heads  from  the  start ;  and  we  will  have  all  that 
Europe  has  used  us  to,  whether  we  malce  or  buy  it. 
In  fine  we  have  the  largest  capacity  as  consumers  at 
the  very  outstart  of  our  career  as  producers. 

Lastly  Protective  Tariffs  rest  on  experience  as  to  the 
need  of  collective  action  to  naturalize  those  industries 
which  shall  make  the  best  useof  our  natural  resources, 
which  shall  give  our  people  the  best  chance  to  show 


I Q  rXJl  E/^SJ TV  L ECTL  'RES. 

what  is  in  them,  and  which  shall  enable  a  nation  so 
exacting  in  its  wants  to  adjust  its  environment  to  itself. 
The  need  of  such  collective  action  has  been  shown  by 
a  long  series  of  experiences  and  of  experiments,  in 
which  industries  not  sustained  by  it  have  been  either 
crushed  by  the  competition  of  foreign  accumulations 
of  capital,  or  have  been  just  able  to  prolong  existence 
without  hope  of  coming  up  to  the  national  demand. 
The  beginner  in  such  a  country  as  ours  finds  very 
quickly  that  he  is  competing  under  very  unequal  con- 
ditions with  his  foreign  rivals.  He  has  no  hold  on  the 
confidence  of  even  the  home-market ;  the  channels  of 
trade  are  in  the  hands  of  his  rivals ;  he  has  to  enlist 
and  train  a  body  of  workmen  who  have  had  no  ex- 
perience of  industrial  methods  such  as  he  is  applying. 
He  will  come  to  grief  unless  the  nation  say  to  him  : 
"  Go  ahead.  Build  your  factory.  Put  in  your 
machinery.  We  will  stand  by  you  in  making  this 
country  all  that  its  resources  and  the  capacity  of  its 
people  fit  it  to  be." 

So  a  Protective  Tariff  is  laid  to  equalize  the  con- 
ditions to  the  home  producer,  so  as  to  give  him  as 
much  advantage  as  is  possessed  by  his  foreign  com- 
petitor. It  checks  the  import  of  foreign  commodities 
on  the  principle  that  a  reasonable  discouragement  of 
the  consumption  of  such  commodities  by  developing 
home  production  will  be  for  the  general  benefit  of  the 
nation. 

But  be  it  noted  that  a  Protecti\'e  Tariff  is  not  a 
Prohibitory  Tariff  It  does  not  aim  at  shutting  out 
completely  the  competition  of  the  foreign  producer, 
nor  does  it  handicap  him  in  his  competition.  It  aims 
at  equalization  of  conditions,  not  at  creating  insuper- 


GENERAL  PRINCIPLES.  j  i 

able  bounds  around  home  industry.  How  much  duty- 
is  needed  for  this  purpose  in  any  given  case,  it  is  often 
very  hard  to  say.  I  observe  that  Col.  Carroll  D.  Wright 
of  your  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  has  been 
seeking  to  devise  a  kind  of  mathematical  formula,  by 
which  might  be  determined  what  is  needed  in  any  given 
case.  I  hope  he  may  succeed  in  doing  so,  for  nothing 
would  better  serve  the  friends  of  the  protective  policy 
than  the  establishing  of  some  method  which  would 
remove  all  arbitrary  elements  from  the  decision  of  that 
question. 

A  Protective  Tariff  differs  again,  and  just  as  widely, 
from  a  Tariff  for  Revenue  only.  A  Tariff  for  Revenue 
only  either  levies  duties  exclusively  on  articles  not 
made  at  home,  or  it  compensates  duties  on  articles 
made  at  home  by  equal  excise  duties  on  the  home  pro- 
duction. A  Protective  Tariff  selects  for  duty  those 
articles  which  come  into  competition  with  home-made 
articles,  and  it  taxes  these  on  the  principle  that  their 
consumption  should  be  discouraged  and  that  of  the 
home-made  articles  encouraged.  Its  purpose  is  to 
divert  a  portion  of  the  capital  of  the  country  into  a 
channel  in  which  it  otherwise  would  not  or  could  not 
flow,  or  would  flow  less  freely.  The  British  Tariff  is 
one  for  revenue  only,  because,  with  the  exception  of  the 
duties  on  segars  and  on  one  form  of  alcohol,  it  lays  no 
duty  on  any  article  made  at  home,  without  compensat- 
ing this  by  an  equivalent  excise  duty.  The  Norwegian 
Tariff  is  still  more  thoroughly  of  this  type,  for  it  lays 
duties  only  on  articles  which  cannot  be  produced  in 
Norway.  Thus  it  has  a  two  hundred  per  cent  duty  on 
coffee  and  a  similar  duty  on  sugar  and  on  tea.  The 
Norwegians  are  taxed  by  this  just  as  heavily  as  though 


12 


I  ■.y/l'EKS/TY  LECTfRES. 


some  of  the  duties  had  been  laid  on  articles  which 
could  be  made  at  home  but  are  not, — such  as  cottons. 
'rhej)ul)lic  burdens  under  their  Tariff  are  just  as  great, 
and  are  felt  very  hea\i!y  by  the  poorer  classes,  while 
the  people  as  producers  derive  no  benefit  from  their 
Tariff. 

It  will  be  seen  that  a  Protective  Tariff  is  but  a  rough 
and  ready  way  of  solving"  an  industrial  difficulty.  It 
is  open  to  a  plausible  objection  from  some  who  would 
like  to  see  the  thing  done  more  neatly.  They  say : 
"Your  policy  is  a  very  clumsy  one.  It  leaves  too 
much  to  depend  upon  individual  initiative.  It  gives 
no  assurance  that  the  industries  it  fosters  will  be  dis- 
tributed with  anything  like  equality  over  the  whole 
country.  It  takes  the  risk  of  leaving  some  parts  of 
the  country  nearly  as  destitute  of  manufactures  as  are 
Ireland  or  New  Zealand,  or  of  exposing  their  begin- 
nings in  manufacture  to  an  overwhelming  competition 
from  older  and  more  developed  districts  at  home. 
Would  it  not  be  better  to  have  government  take  the 
whole  matter  in  hand,  and  locate  the  factories  as  it 
now  locates  its  forts  and  arsenals,  with  exact  reference 
to  the  needs  of  each  and  every  part  of  th'e  national 
territory?" 

It  is  no  doubt  true  that  Socialism  could  furnish  us 
with  a  more  exact  solution  of  this  as  of  many  another 
difficulty,  but  always  at  the  sacrifice  of  higher  advan- 
tages than  it  secures.  The  enterprise,  the  independence, 
the  initiative  of  the  indix-idual,  the  manly  self-reliance 
of  men,  the  right  to  make  of  your  own  life  what  you 
wish  to  make  of  it, — these  are  what  it  asks  us  to  sacri- 
fice by  a  return  to  an  undeveloped  social  order,  out  of 
which  our  fathers    escaped    b\'   blood  and  by   tears. 


GENERA L  PRINCIPLES. 


13 


Protection  differs  from  Socialism  just  in  minimizing- 
what  Socialism  maximizes, — the  interference  of  the 
state  with  the  direction  of  industry.  It  maximizes 
what  Socialism  minimizes, — the  initiative  of  the  indi- 
vidual. It  moves  between  two  extremes  which  con- 
stantly meet,  and  mutually  beget  each  other.  The  one 
is  the  theory  that  the  state  has  no  responsibility  for 
the  general  welfare,  that  its  duties  are  those  of  the 
policeman  only,  and  that  it  cannot  help  if  people 
starve.  The  other  is  the  theory  that  the  state  must  be 
everything  and  do  everything,  and  leave  as  little  as 
possible  to  the  individual. 

The  Tariff  is  not  an  ideal  solution  of  the  difficulty 
to  which  it  is  directed.  There  are  no  ideal  solutions 
in  legislation.  Every  law  is  a  compromise,  by  which 
some  advantages  are  sacrificed  in  order  to  secure  what 
its  authors  thought  were  greater  advantages. 

A  Tariff  does  not  at  once  effect  an  equal  distribu- 
tion of  industries  over  a  country  like  ours.  The  dis- 
tribution might  have  been  done  more  effectively  by 
the  collective  action  of  the  nation  through  its  govern- 
ment. But  it  effects  that  distribution  in  the  long  run,  as 
is  shown  by  our  own  recent  redistribution  of  industries. 
It  puts  a  whole  skin  on  the  industrial  state,  within 
which  the  circulations  of  industrial  life  move  freely 
and  complete  themselves.  It  proceeds  on  the  po'^tu- 
late  that  a  nation  is  an  organic  whole,  within  which 
things  tend  to  an  equalization  more  promptly  than  in 
the  world  at  large.  Capital,  for  instance,  flows  freely 
and  almost  without  restriction  within  national  bound- 
aries, but  it  is  exceptional  to  find  it  flowing  across  them. 
It  seeks  in  our  South  and  West  for  more  favorable 
conditions  to  carry  on  great  industries  like  the  smelting 


H 


C •.\7i-ERSITV  LECTURES. 


of  iron  and  the  spinning  and  weaving  of  cotton.  It  is 
said  that  Penn.syl\-ania  and  Massachusetts  arc  pinched 
by  this  new  competition.  They  can  stand  it,  for  other 
channels  he  o]ilii  for  the  direction  of  tlieir  capital, 
and  especially  in  the  carrying  those  manufactures  to 
a  higher  point  of  elaboration  than  we  have  attempted 
heretofore. 

A  Protective  Tariff  does  not  attempt  to  protect 
everything.  It  is  not  necessary  that  it  should.  There 
are  some  industries  which  enjoy  a  natural  protection 
against  foreign  competition  amounting  to  an  absolute 
prohibition.  So  long,  for  instance,  as  we  cannot 
import  houses,  the  trades  connected  with  that  great 
business  need  not  be  mentioned  in  the  Tariff  And 
it  is  just  this  "natural  protection,"  which  Prof  Tho- 
rold  Rodgers  says  ought  to  be  enough  for  us,  that 
suggested  the  enactment  of  protective  Tariffs  in  the 
first  instance.  In  colonial  times  it  was  found  that  iron 
"hollow  wares"  were  too  bulky  to  permit  of  their 
import  except  at  a  great  charge  for  transportation. 
Not  only  are  they  weighty,'  but  they  do  not  pack  to 
any  advantage  on  account  of  their  shape.  So  the 
manufacture  of  pots,  kettles,  stoves  and  the  like  was 
begun  in  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  at  a  time  when  the 
countr}'  was  dependent  on  I^ngland  for  every  other 
kind  of  iron  ware.  The  American  farmer  was  shrewd 
enough  to  observe  that  he  was  much  the  better  off  for 
having  this  iron  business  in  his  neighborhood,  as  it 
gave  him  a  class  of  customers,  for  breadstuffs  and  the 
like,  close  at  hand.  He  might  be  paying  a  little  more 
for  his  hollow  wares  than  if  he  could  have  got  them 
carried  cheaply  from  England.  But  when  he  compared 
the  price  he  got  for  what  lie  had  to  sell,  with  that  he 


THE  FARMER. 


15 


paid  for  pots  and  kettles,  he  seemed  to  be  not  the 
worse  but  the  better  for  the  difficulty  in  bringing  such 
things  from  Europe.  So  it  occurred  to  him  to  ask  if 
he  would  not  be  the  bttter  for  other  things  being  too 
dear  or  too  bulky  to  bring  across  the  ocean,  and  if  it 
might  not  be  his  best  policy  to  buy  such  things  at  home 
even  if  the  cost  were  a  little  greater  on  that  account. 
And  when  he  got  an  effective  government  of  his  own 
over  the  country,  and  it  had  to  raise  a  revenue,  he 
thought  it  wise  to  collect  that  revenue  in  such  a  way 
as  to  gi\'e  the  countr}'  a  little  more  of  that  "  natural 
protection"  which  had  done  so  well  for  a  few  indus- 
tries. In  .so  doing  he  was  acting  on  just  the  lines 
suggested  by  his  experience. 

Be  pleased  to  note,  gentlemen,  that  Protective 
Tariffs  are  laid  in  the  first  instance  by  agricultural 
communities.  It  is  the  votes  of  the  farmers  that 
establish  them,  and  for  the  benefit  of  their  own  busi- 
ness, because  they  have  come  to  see  how  wasteful  and 
unprofitable  it  is  to  carry  on  their  farming  at  a  distance 
from  the  artizans  they  feed,  and  whose  services  they 
must  employ.  We  sometimes  hear  Protective  Tariffs 
criticised  as  though  we  ha\'e  such  tariffs  for  the  .'^ake 
of  the  manufacturers  and  because  we  have  manufac- 
turers. It  would  be  much  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that 
we  have  manufacturers  because  we  have  had  Protective 
Tariffs  through  more  than  two-thirds  of  our  history 
under  the  national  constitution.  This  is  especially 
true  of  New  England,  which  clung  to  her  shipping 
and  her  commerce  and  opposed  the  protective  policy  in 
the  earlier  years  of  the  Republic,  until  she  was  forced 
to  become  a  manufacturing  country  by  the  vote  of  the 
South  and  West,  no  less  than  of  tlv^  Middle  States. 


l5  UNIVKRSrj-Y  LECTURES. 

I  insist  on  this  because  the  relation  of  the  tariff  \.o 
agriculture  is  a  point  on  which  the  critics  of  our 
national  policy  love  to  dwell,  and  because  it  was  the 
consideration  that  weighed  most  with  myself  in  delay- 
ing my  conversion  from  Free  Trade  beliefs.  In  my 
case  the  finishing  touch  was  administered  by  one  of 
those  Western  Farmers,  to  whom  the  Cobden  Club 
appeals  with  such  confidence  for  the  overthrow  of  our 
protective  policy.  It  was  in  a  town  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley  nearly  eighteen  years  ago  that  I  attended  a 
meeting  of  farmers  called  to  establish  a  cotton  factory 
by  the  combination  of  their  savings.  The  place  had 
neither  water-power  nor  railroad  communication  ;  and 
the  beautiful  prairie  fields  around  the  town  .seemed  to 
admonish  its  people  to  stick  to  the  one  indu.stry  for 
which  had  been  given  them  an  abundance  of  resources, 
and  to  leave  cotton-spinning  to  other  localities. 
Besides,  as  I  urged  on  one  of  them,  they  would  be 
crushed  out  by  the  competition  of  the  Eastern  manu- 
facturer. He  answered  me  that  farming,  when  it 
stands  alone  in  any  community,  is  a  poor  business  ; 
tliat  the  growth  of  wheat  and  similar  crops  for  one 
year  after  another  did  not  enable  them  to  find  employ- 
ment for  the  poorer  and  less  robust  members  of  their 
community,  who  were  made  dependent  on  the  earnings 
of  the  rest.  A  factory  would  bring  into  wholesome 
action  a  large  amount  of  human  capacity  which  was 
running  to  waste,  besides  giving  to  the  farmer  a  local 
market  for  many  profitable  crops  and  products,  for 
which  there  is  no  sale  in  a  merely  farming  neighbor- 
hood. Nor  did  he  fear  the  Ea.stern  manufacturer  so 
long  as  the  Tariff  gave  him  a  reasonable  amount  of 
security  against  English  competition.     So  long  as  the 


THE  FARMER. 


17 


home  production  in  this  or  any  other  article  fell  below 
the  national  demand,  there  was  room  for  every  fresh 
beginner  without  any  interference  with  those  who  had 
made  their  start  earlier.  And  this,  he  said,  in  a  country 
growing  as  fast  as  ours,  must  be  the  ordinary  condition 
of  every  kind  of  manufacture. 

So  the  American  farmer  has  reasoned,  and  he  is 
justified  by  hard  facts  in  thus  assuming  that  he  is 
going  to  gain  by  the  neighborhood  of  the  artizan, 
rather  than  by  leaving  him  at  a  distance.  The  West 
knows  why  land  in  Pennsylvania  is  worth  $49.00  an 
acre,  and  but  $10.89  in  Virginia;  or  $42.00  in  Massa- 
chusetts and  $5.56  in  Mississippi ;  or  $65.00  in  New 
Jersey  and  but  $4.30  in  Georgia.  There  are  three 
great  counties  that  stand  at  the  head  in  point  of  agri- 
cultural wealth  in  this  country.  They  are  Champlain 
in  Illinois,  Worcester  in  Massachusetts,  and  Lancaster 
in  Pennsylvania.  As  I  came  home  from  the  moun- 
tains this  summer,  the  train  carried  me  through  the 
last  of  the  three,  just  at  the  time  when  the  harvest 
activities  were  coming  to  their  close.  As  I  looked 
from  the  windows  of  the  carriage  upon  mile  after  mile 
of  comfort  and  prosperity,  I  was  constrained  to  ask 
myself:  "  Is  there  anywhere  on  the  earth's  surface  an 
equal  body  of  people  whose  lot  is  in  every  sense  as 
advantageous  as  that  of  these  American  farmers  of 
ours  ?  "  I  believe  there  is  not,  and  I  also  believe  that 
at  no  time  in  the  histor}'  of  the  country  was  that  lot 
so  enviable  as  in  these  last  twenty-four  years  that  they 
have  spent  under  "  the  oppression  of  a  Protective 
Tariff- 
Suppose  that  that  policy  were  reversed,  and  that 
we    managed   to  retain  all  the  manufacturins:  indus- 


i8  rxu'ERs/yy  lectures. 

tries  we  have  acquired  under  it.  I  cannot  imagine 
any  one  whose  acquaintance  with  the  conditions  of  our 
industries  makes  his  opinion  worth  considering,  claim- 
ing more  than  this,  if  so  much.  But  even  on  this 
supposition  the  growth  of  the  country  for  many  years 
to  come  must  turn  chiefly  to  farming.  The  tide  of 
immigration  would  set  toward  the  farm  much  more 
than  it  does  at  present.  At  the  utmost,  the  farmer's 
customers  would  remain  the  same  in  number  as  at 
present,  while  his  competitors  would  multiply.  It  is 
much  more  than  probable  that  many  of  his  present 
customers  would  be  obliged  to  change  their  occupa- 
tion and  betake  thcmseh'es  to  agriculture  because 
the  workshops  in  which  they  toil  had  been  closed 
by  the  change  of  our  policy,  as  in  1837  and  1857. 
Does  any  one  suppose  that  the  farmer  is  going  to 
gain  by  a  policy  which  will  convert  his  customers 
into  his  competitors  ? 

It  is  possible  that  the  farmer  pays  for  some  articles 
more  than  he  would  pay  under  a  Free  Trade  policy. 
Those  who  think  that  final,  are  welcome  to  the  con- 
cession. But  the  farmer  is  not  interested  simply  in 
the  price  he  pays  for  manufoctured  goods.  He  is 
interested  in  the  relation  of  the  prices  of  those  raw 
materials  (including  food)  which  he  produces,  to  the 
prices  of  the  commodities  into  which  they  are  con- 
verted, and  of  which  he  is  a  consumer.  The  prices 
of  these  two  classes  come  nearest  to  each  other  in 
those  localities  in  which  the  one  is  converted  into  the 
other.  Mr.  Carey,  who  was  a  paper-maker,  uses  this 
illustration  :  Suppose  that  all  the  paper-mills  of  the 
country  were  located  on  the  Schuylkill.  At  that 
point  the  price  of  a  pound  of  rags  would  be  compara- 


THE  FARMER. 


19 


"tiv'ely  high,  and  that  of  a  pound  of  paper  compara- 
tively low.  With  every  hundred  miles  you  went 
Westward,  the  price  of  rags  would  fall  and  that  of 
paper  would  rise.  At  the  foot  of  the  R.ocky  Moun- 
tains the  divergence  in  the  two  prices  would  be  as 
remarkable  as  was  their  convergence  on  the  banks  of 
the  Schuylkill.  The  tendency  of  Free  Trade  would 
be  to  remove  the  area  of  convergence  to  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  to  bring  the  \\hole  country 
within  the  area  of  wide  divergence.  Will  the  farmer, 
"whose  crops  are  all,  or  nearly  all,  the  raw  materials 
of  manufacture,  profit  by  a  change  which  enables 
him  to  buy  less  clothing  or  hardware  with  his 
bushel  of  wheat  or  his  fleece  of  wool  ?  And  will 
he  find  any  compensation  for  this  change  in  the 
fact  that  his  purchases  are  effected  with  smaller 
amounts  of  coin  than  before  ?  That,  I  take  it,  is 
all  that  is  really  promised  him,  when  it  is  said  that 
he  would  buy  more  cheaply  if  there  were  no  Protec- 
tive Tariff 

It  is  objected  that  after  twenty-four  years  of  this 
Protective  policy  the  American  farmer  is  still  depend- 
ent upon  the  foreign  market.  This  is  true  to  some 
extent,  though  by  no  means  to  so  great  an  extent  as 
is  assumed.  Those  bulks  which  gather  at  a  single 
point  in  commerce,  are  always  thought  greater  in  pro- 
portion than  they  really  are.  The  wheat  which  passes 
through  New  York  to  the  European  consumer  bulks 
larger  to  the  public  eye,  than  the  far  greater  amount 
Avhich  goes  to  furnish  food  to  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts of  our  own  country.  Of  the  entire  food  product 
of  the  Northern  states,  ninety-four  per  cent  is  con- 
sumed at   home   and  but  six  per   cent   is   exported. 


20 


UX/rEKS/TY  LECTURES. 


That  wc  should  be  obliged  to  seek  a  foreign  market 
for  even  six  per  cent  is  due  to  a  cause  for  which  the 
Tariff  policy  is  not  responsible.  It  is  that  our  Home- 
stead laws  have  put  such  a  premium  upon  agriculture 
in  the  \Vest,  as  has  made  it  impossible  for  any  Tariff 
to  secure  an  equal  growth  of  manufacturing  with 
agricultural  industry.  To  secure  the  rapid  occupation 
of  our  public  domain  we  have  given  every  new  farmer 
there  the  site  on  which  he  is  to  pursue  liis  industry, 
and  the  chief  raw  material  he  is  to  use  in  it,  for  a  sum 
very  little  greater  than  the  costs  of  the  survey.  We 
have  made  no  restrictions  as  to  nationality,  if  the  new 
settler  will  but  declare  his  intentions  to  become  an 
American  citizen.  And  some  of  the  Western  states 
have  enlarged  the  offer  by  conferring  upon  such 
settlers  all  the  prerogatives  of  voters  in  state  and 
national  elections,  and  have  thrown  state  offices  open 
to  them,  after  a  three  months'  residence. 

This  policy  has  drawn  to  the  West  between  four 
and  five  millions  of  farmers,  whose  condition  would 
be  nearly  as  bad  as  could  be,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
inducements  the  Tariff  has  offered  to  foreign  as  well  as 
native  capitalists  and  artizans  to  undertake  that  devel- 
opment of  manufactures  on  American  soil,  which  fur- 
nishes the  American  farmer  with  the  only  good  and 
steady  market  he  has  for  breadstuffs.  Just  in  so  far 
as  his  production  of  food  exceeds  the  demand  of  this 
market,  he  makes  his  prosperity  depend  upon  the 
chances  of  the  weather  in  Europe,  the  possibility  of 
competition  from  India,  and  other  contingencies  over 
which  neither  he  nor  the  nation  has  any  control.  Our 
Protectionist  plan  is  to  extend  our  manufactures  until 
we  make  at  home  the  $258,000,000  worth  of  goods  w^e 


THE  FARMER.  21 

now  import,  and  feed  the  workmen  we  employ  in 
making  them  with  the  surplus  of  our  agriculture  we 
now  have  to  export.  To  effect  that  there  must  be 
persistence  in  our  tariff  policy. 


II. 

THE  EVIDENCE  OE  HISTORY. 


Gentlemen  of  the  University : — 

jMy  first  Lecture  was  occupied  mostly  with  some 
general  considerations,  which  have  led  Protectionists 
to  believe  in  the  wisdom  of  a  Tariff,  which  tends  to 
restrict  trade  with  foreign  countries  for  the  sake  of  a 
freer  industrial  movement  at  home.  I  now  propose  to 
reinforce  those  considerations  by  directing  your  atten- 
tion to  some  parts  of  the  history  of  national  indu;^tr\', 
which  bear  upon  the  controversy.  I  am  aware  of  the 
necessity  of  employing  this  argument  from  history  with 
care  and  discrimination,  if  we  are  not  to  be  misled  b\' 
parallels  which  lie  on  the  mere  surface  of  things.  But 
I  know  of  no  test  and  corrective  of  economic  theories 
except  that  experience  of  which  history  is  the  record. 
I  know  it  is  claimed  by  some  economists  that  such 
controversies  can  be  settled  without  any  appeal  to 
history.  By  the  aid  of  such  phrases  as  "of  course," 
"everybody  must  admit,"  and  "let  us  assume,"  they 
will  prove  to  you  that  no  country  can  really  be  held 
back  by  any  other  in  its  normal  course  of  develop- 
ment, unless  by  force  of  arms  or  political  predomi- 
nance; and  that  no  industries  really  worth  the  having 
can  be  built  up  by  Protection  or  broken  down  by  Free 
Trade.     Protectionists  do  not  find  much  that  is  con- 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY.  23- 

vincing  in  that  kind  of  argumentation  ;  and  the  world 
is  beginning  to  believe  that  a  science  based  on  mere 
assumptions  is  not  one  to  whose  direction  great  prac- 
tical interests  can  be  entrusted.  Hence  the  not  un- 
justified distrust  of  the  claims  of  Political  Economy  to 
rank  as  a  science  at  all;  and  hence  also  the  rise  of  what 
calls  itself  the  "  Historical  School  "  of  economists,  which 
professes  to  follow  the  opposite  method,  and  to  take  its 
stand  on  facts  rather  than  assumptions.  There  is  an 
easy  road  into  the  land  of  unreality  by  the  gate  called 
"  It  Must  Be  So,"  and  we  shall  endeavor  to  avoid  both 
the  gate  and  the  land  it  leads  to. 

We  shall  commence  with  the  country  which  stands 
forward  as  the  especial  champion  of  Free  Trade.  The 
economic  history  of  England  did  not  begin  in  the 
month  of  June  in  the  year  1846,  as  some  Free  Traders 
seem  to  think.  There  is  a  long  and  instructive  story 
before  we  come  to  Mr.  Cobden  and  his  Anti-Corn-Law 
League.  At  the  beginning  of  that  story  we  find  Eng- 
land a  poor,  backward  and  unprogressive  nation,  prac- 
ticing Free  Trade  wnth  the  continent,  and  getting  little 
benefit  from  the  practice.  Although  the  Romans  had 
worked  the  iron  deposits  in  the  Forest  of  Dean,  the 
England  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  dependent-  upon 
Normandy  for  its  supply  of  that  metal,  and  the  cost 
was  so  great, — Prof  Thorold  Rogers  tells  us, — that 
the  wear  of  plow  and  spade  was  an  important  part  of 
the  expense  of  managing  a  farm.  She  raised  excellent 
wool,  and  sold  it  to  the  Flemings,  who  in  return  sup- 
plied the  English  people  with  all  but  the  coarsest  fab- 
rics. She  had  substantially  no  manufactures,  an  im- 
poverished agriculture  and  a  half-starved  people.  While 
the  whole  population  was  employed  in  raising  food,. 


24 


C  X/IERS/TY  LKCTC'RES. 


there  was  what  we  would  think  but  three-fifths  of  a 
sufficient  supply  for  their  wants. 

A  beginning  of  the  policy  that  brings  the  farmer  and 
the  artizan  into  neighborhood  was  made  by  Edward 
III.,  who  laid  such  restrictions  on  the  export  of  wool 
in  1337,  as  forced  the  Flemings  to  bring  their  wool 
manufacture  over  into  England.  "  Nor  can  we  doubt," 
says  Mr.  Cunningham  in  his  Growth  of  English  Indus- 
try and  CouDticrce  (Cambridge,  1 882),  "  that  his  policy 
was  successful,  and  that  the  great  woolen  manufactures 
of  England  were  in  their  earlier  stages  much  indebted 
to  his  fostering  care.  This  was  protection,  but  protec- 
tion of  a  type  that  Mr.  Pvlill  regarded  as  justifiable  even 
in  the  present  day."  His  method  was  to  put  up  the 
export  duty  to  forty  shillings  the  sack,  and  to  limit  the 
amount  that  might  be  exported.  Twelve  centres  of  the 
new  industry  are  enumerated  as  having  been  estab- 
lished by  Flemish  immigrants  in  his  reign,  and  some 
of  their  settlements  were  so  extensive  that  the  commu- 
nities they  formed  retain  to  this  day  linguistic  pecu- 
liarities they  derived  from  Flanders.  In  the  last  year 
of  his  long  reign  he  took  the  farther  step  of  requiring 
that  eveiy  English  subject  should  wear  cloth  of  Eng- 
lish weaving.  He  was  the  first  English  king  who  re- 
garded the  trade  and  industry  of  his  people  as  anything 
but  a  source  of  revenue  and  an  object  of  taxation. 

This  was  more  than  five  hundred  years  before  the 
repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws,  and  this  long  interval  shows 
us  a  series  nearly  as  long  of  laws  for  the  protection  of 
English  industry,  increasing  in  number  and  importance 
with  the  approach  to  our  own  time,  and  with  the  growth 
of  England  in  wealth  and  in  industrial  power.  This 
wise  policy  was  favored  by  the  c\ents  which  at  \'arious 


THE  FA'IDENCE  OF  HISTORY.  2" 

times  drove  large  bodies  of  hard-working  people  into 
England  to  escape  the  religious  persecutions  which 
raged  on  the  continent.  This  enabled  Queen  Elizabeth 
to  naturalize  the  lace  and  cutlery  manufactures,  while 
the  immigrant  Huguenots  a  century  later  brought  the 
manufacture  of  silk,  felts,  gloves  and  fine  iron  wares. 
These  opportunities  were  seconded  by  fresh  laws  for 
the  protection  of  those  new  industries.  But  the  most 
notable  piece  of  legislation  in  this  direction  was  the 
Navigation  Laws,  which  were  enacted  in  Cromwell's 
time  to  destroy  the  Dutch  monopoly  of  the  carrying 
trade,  and  which  remained  unrepealed  until  1849.  By 
this  law  foreign  ships  were  confined  to  the  products 
of  their  own  countries  and  their  colonies,  when  they 
brought  cargoes  into  the  ports  of  England  and  its  colo- 
nies; while  English  ships  were  free  to  bring  the  pro- 
ducts of  eveiy  land.  It  is  admitted  that  this  great  Act 
laid  the  foundation  of  England's  greatness  as  a  com- 
mercial and  ship-owning  country,  and  it  has  had  the 
approval  of  both  Adam  Smith  and  John  Stuart  Mill. 

The  most  remarkable  instance  of  the  development 
of  an  English  manufacture  by  Protection  is  precisely 
that  one  whose  friends  are  the  most  pronounced  ene- 
mies of  the  policy  to  which  it  owes  its  very  existence. 
Originally  the  manufacture  of  cottons  in  England  was 
forbidden  in  the  interest  of  the  wool-growers,  and  so 
unpopular  was  this  fabric  that  a  lady  who  appeared  on 
the  streets  of  London  in  a  cotton  gown  ran  great  risk 
of  having  it  torn  from  her  back  by  the  wives  of  the 
woolen- weavers.  It  was  not  until  well  on  in  the  last 
century  that  the  business  was  even  legalized  in  Eng- 
land, and  at  the  same  time  protected  from  foreign  com- 
petition by  heavy  duties.     At  that  time  India  stood 


26  r. \ V / 1: Rsj 7  y  J. E C7'i  a: US. 

ready  to  supply  England  with  cotton  fabrics,  fine  or 
coarse,  at  a  price  with  which  no  English  manufacturer 
could  compete.  But  East  Indian  cottons  were  shut 
out  of  the  English  market  by  prohibitions  until  1832, 
and  those  of  the  continent  of  Europe  were  laid  under 
a  duty  amounting  to  two-thirds  of  their  value.  Behind 
barriers  of  this  kind  Manchester  made  its  beginnings 
in  weaving  and  spinning  this  fabric.  At  that  time  the 
t  )wn  was  too  insignificant  to  have  a  representative  in 
Parliament,  and  the  Northern  shires  of  England  were 
backward  districts,  notable  chiefly  for  their  devotion  to 
the  Pope  and  the  Pretender.  •  The  long  list  of  manu- 
facturing centres,  which  now  dot  Lancashire  and  York- 
shire, had  no  existence.  Nor  had  the  country  any 
iiatiiral  advantage  for  this  manufacture,  except  that  of 
a  damper  climate.  Nothing  but  Protection,  in  a  form 
more  extreme  than  any  American  Protectionist  would 
like  to  justify,  could  have  forced  this  industry  into  ex- 
istence or  enabled  England  to  make  a  fair  start  in  it. 

But  mark  the  result.  In  this  case,  as  in  nearly  every 
other  in  which  a  manufacture  is  thus  naturalized,  new 
inventions  and  improvements  in  method  followed  rap- 
idly. Ten  great  inventions  and  a  great  multitude  of 
lesser  contri\ances  to  sa\e  labor  and  material  were  pat- 
ented between  1738  and  the  close  of  the  century,  the 
chief  being  the  power-loom,  the  spinning-jenny  and  the 
spinning-mule.  And  behind  all  these  was  James  Watt's 
steam-engine,  which  had  just  begun  its  work  of  revo- 
lutionizing the  industry  of  the  world.  The  outcome 
of  all  was  the  factory  system,  devised  by  Richard  Ark- 
wright  to  give  the  precision  of  military  drill  to  all  the 
operation  of  manufacture.  And  that  England's  rivals 
might  not  prof  t  by  these  great  improvements,  it  M'as 


THE  E  J  7DEjVCE   OF  HIS  TOR  Y.  2  J 

forbidden  by  law  to  send  any  part  ©f  this  machinery 
out  of  England,  even  to  India  or  any  colony  or  de- 
pendency of  Great  Britain  ! 

This  last  piece  of  legislation  is  the  best  exponent  of 
the  spirit  in  which  English  policy  was  directed  during 
this  most  critical  period  in  the  world's  industrial  de- 
velopment. In  the  heyday  of  these  great  inventions 
England  had  formed  the  purpose  to  make  herself  the 
world's  w^orkshop,  and  to  bring  the  rest  of  mankind 
into  an  industrial  dependence  upon  herself  Hence 
her  efforts  to  secure  an  entire  monopoly  of  the  new 
machinery.  She  made  it  a  penal  offence  to  export  it 
out  of  the  kingdom,  even  to  her  own  colonies,  and  she 
punished  with  equal  severity  any  attempt  to  induce 
skilled  artizans  to  emigrate.  This  later  law  was  re- 
pealed through  the  efforts  of  Mr.  Huskisson  in  1824, 
but  the  former  remained  in  force  even  after  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws,  and  with  the  approval  of  that  eminent 
Free  Trader,  Mr.  J.  R.  M'Culloch.  She  thus  seconded 
by  legislation  the  ambition  of  her  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers to  make  the  whole  world  tributary  to  her 
wealth  and  capital,  through  those  memorable  and  criti- 
cal seventy  years  which  preceded  1846.  She  extended 
protection  to  every  industi'}^  with  which  she  now  is 
fighting  for  the  control  of  the  markets  of  the  Avorld. 
She  accompanied  this  with  every  kind  of  restriction 
upon  her  colonies  and  dependencies,  which  might  con- 
tribute to  obtain  for  her  more  customers  or  larger 
markets.  She  supported  this  policy  by  every  diplo- 
matic resource  at  the  command  of  the  most  powerful 
of  military  and  na\al  empires.  She  cajoled  for  trade, 
bullied  for  trade  and  fought  for  trade.  And  then  when 
Protection  seemed  to  have  done  its  perfect  work,  she 


2S  uNiiKRsi rv  ]j-:cruREs. 

abandoned  it,  nob  through  any  growth  in  moral  insight 
or  in  love  for  her  neighbors,  but  because  Free  Trade 
seemed  now  to  serve  better  the  great  aim  of  putting 
England  before  all  other  countries  and  keeping  her 
there. 

To  understand  the  meaning  of  what  Free  Traders 
have  called  "the  peaceful  revolution  of  1846,"  it  is 
necessary  to  look  at  anotlier  side  of  her  history. 
Parallel  with  this  gigantic  growth  in  manufactures, 
was  proceeding  the  revolution  which  deprived  the 
English  common  people  of  the  hereditary  possession 
of  land.  At  the  Restoration  of  the  Stuarts  the  greater 
part  of  the  soil  of  England  was  held  in  small  farms 
by  tenures  which  were  regarded  as  perpetual.  The 
ownership  was  vested  in  the  landlord,  but  the  tenant 
was  liable  only  for  a  fixed  rent,  which  could  not  be  in- 
creased through  an)'  act  of  the  owner.  The  "  unearned 
increment,"  of  which  we  hear  so  much  in  these  days, 
fell  to  the  tenant,  and  it  amounted  to  so  much  through 
the  growth  of  society,  that  the  rent  was  generally  much 
below  the  annual  value  of  the  land.  This  lasted  until  the 
legislators  of  the  Restoration  period  transferred  the  ju- 
risdiction of  these  tenures  to  the  King's  courts,  where 
no  respect  was  shown  to  those  maxims  from  which  these 
customary  tenures  derived  their  permanence.  On  the 
contrary  they  treated  all  these  "  imperfect  rights  "  as 
innovations  on  the  rights  of  the  land-owner,  and  pro- 
ceeded upon  the  contrary  principle  that  the  landlord 
could  "  do  what  he  willed  with  his  own."  This  led 
to  the  application  of  trade  principles  to  the  land,  and 
the  small  farmer  was  swept  awa)'  to  make  room  for 
the  large  farmer,  for  much  the  same  reason  that  a 
trader  prefers  a  large  .sale  to  mar.y  small  ones.      Par- 


THE  EVIDENCE   OF  HISTORY. 


29 


liament  followed  up  this  blow  by  grants  of  authority 
and  loans  of  public  monL-y  to  enclose  the  common 
lands,  which  for  time  out  of  mind  had  been  open  to 
the  use  of  the  common  people,  and  which  furnislied 
them  with  grazing  and  fuel.  Within  a  century  and 
a  half  one  third  of  the  soil  of  England  was  thus 
enclosed.  The  very  greens  of  the  villages,  as  Arch- 
deacon Hare  complains,  were  thus  taken  into  the 
fields  of  the  estate,  leaving  no  room  for  out-door 
sports,  and  no  common  resort  for  the  villagers  except 
the  ale-house.  Hence  the  rural  England  of  to-day, 
with  a  limited  number  of  great  land-owners,  a  small 
army  of  capitalist  tenants  holding  by  nineteen  years' 
leases,  and  an  agricultural  peasantry  living  on  wages, 
with  no  estate  in  the  land, — "  the  thinnest  and  abso- 
lutely most  joyless  peasantry  in  Europe,"  Prof  Cliffe 
Leslie  says. 

At  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  Mr.  Seebohm  tells 
us,  of  those  who  earned  their  living  by  toil,  one  person 
in  three  lived  by  some  other  employment  than  agri- 
culture. Now  but  one  in  four  is  employed  in  farming, 
and  the  other  three  are  at  manufactures  or  some  other 
work  that  is  not  tillage  of  the  soil.  There  has  been  a 
sixfold  change  in  three  hundred  years.  Nor  has  so 
great  a  change  been  brought  about  by  any  necessity. 
As  the  example  of  Belgium  shows,  a  far  larger  body 
of  both  capital  and  labor  could  be  expended  in  farm- 
ing England,  and  with  the  result  that  England  could 
more  than  supply  her  people  with  food  without  ex- 
tending the  area  of  her  agriculture  by  a  single  acre. 
Belgium  feeds  four  hundred  and  fifty  people  to  the 
square  mile,  and  one  Flanders  province  has  eighteen 
hundred    and    finds    food    for  them   all.      A   Belgian 


^Q  L\\717:A'S/Ty  LEC'lURES. 

farmer  la\s  out  twice  as  much  on  an  acre  as  does  an 
iMi^lish  farmer,  and  does  not  find  "  the  law  of  dimin- 
ishing returns  from  agriculture  "  at  all  in  the  way  of 
his  sa\'ing  a  large  slice  of  his  income.  And  in  Great 
l^ritain  there  arc  tvvent}'-three  million  acres  of  the  soil 
which  are  lying  absolutely  idle,  not  even  in  use  as 
game  ])reserves.  Of  this,  seven  million  five  hundred 
thousand  acres  are  in  England,  and  much  of  it  in 
the  most  fertile  parts  of  the  kingdom.  It  is  not 
necessit)-,  but  the  belief  that  manufacturing  pays 
better  than  farming,  and  that  it  is  not  limited  in 
profits  by  any  "  law  of  diminishing  returns,"  which 
has  driven  the  English  people  from  the  farms  into  the 
back  streets  of  the  great  cities,  where  they  furnish  an 
inexhaustible  supply  of  cheap  labor  for  the  manuflic- 
turing  capitalist.  It  is  this  that  has  made  England  a 
top-heavy  country,  with  an  o\x'r-dcveloped  manufac- 
turing system,  and  an  under-developed  agriculture, 
dependent  upon  the  rest  of  the  world  for  food  and 
customers,  and  obliged  to  regard  the  growth  of  any 
other  country  in  manufactures  as  a  calamity  to  herself 

So  1846  found  England  with  an  agricultural  system 
that  was  no  longer  able  to  feed  the  people,  and  that 
was  falling  behind  the  national  demand  steadily,  in 
spite  of  laws  for  its  protecticMi  from  foreign  competition. 
In  the  interests  of  her  manu'actures  she  could  no 
longer  maintain  those  laws.  Lancashire  and  Stafford- 
shire wanted  cheap  bread  in  order  to  keep  wages  down; 
and  after  a  great  agitation  the  Corn  Laws  were  swept 
awa\'  as  monstrous. 

So  England  entered  upon  her  new  career  as  the 
apostolic  nation,  with  the  gospel  of  Eree  Trade  to  give 
to    the    world.     As    The    Saturday  Rt'vtcw   says,  she 


THE  EVIDENCE   OF  HISTORY.  ^^  j 

adopted  "  a  new  religion,  made  up  of  Free  Trade  and 
the  pleasanter  parts  of  Christianity,"  about  the  year 
185  I  and  with  the  Prince  Consort  as  the  chief-priest. 
This  new  doctrine  is  so  much  more  sacred  than 
Christianity,  that  it  is  hardly  to  be  discussed,  but 
rather  to  Idc  accepted  as  a  thing  so  nearly  axiomatic 
that  to  doubt  implies  a  certain  unsoundness  of  mind. 
It  stands  on  nearly  the  same  footing  as  the  multiplica- 
tion table  in  point  of  certainty. 

But  to  turn  from  sentiment  and  theory  to  the  facts 
of  the  situation,  we  find  the  reason  for  so  much  posi- 
ti\eness  in  the  necessities  of  England's  position.  She 
is  a  country  which  has  destroyed  the  balance  of  her 
own  industries,  and  therefore  nmst  seek  to  prevent 
others  from  effecting  that  balance  for  themselves.  Her 
own  economists  compare  her  to  a  great  manufacturer 
who  has  secured  a  foremost  position  in  the  world's 
trade  and  must  face  jealous  rivals  and  make  every 
exertion  in  maintaining  it.  They  speak  of  our  rise 
into  a  high  rank,  as  a  commercial  and  manufacturing 
country,  as  the  most  likely  event  to  put  a  stop  to  her 
advance  in  prosperity  and  wealth.  She  does  not  manage 
to  conceal  the  means  by  which  she  has  sought  and 
still  seeks  to  maintain  her  industrial  pre-eminence. 
Mr.  Brougham  in  1816  consoled  her  for  the  losses  she 
had  incurred  by  reckless  exportations  to  America,  on 
the  ground  that  these  would  serve  to  "  stifle  in  the 
cradle  those  rising  manufactures  in  the  United  States, 
which  the  war  had  forced  into  existence  contrary  to 
the  natural  course  of  things."  Mr.  Tremenhere  in  1864 
in  an  official  report  to  Parliament  deprecated  strikes 
on  the  part  of  English  workingmen,  on  the  ground 
that  English  capitalists  had  to  make  great  sacrifices, 


^2  ^ '-V/ 1 '£MS/ TV  L ECTURES. 

amounting  in  some  cases  to  ^^"300,000  or  ;{^400,000  a 
}'car  to  overwhelm  foreign  competition  in  times  of 
depression,  and  thus  to  clear  the  way  for  the  \\  hole 
trade  to  step  in  when  prices  revive  again.  These  great 
capitals  he  describes  as  "  the  only  great  instruments  of 
industrial  warfare"  still  left  to  England,  since  her  rivals 
had  come  up  to  lier  in  other  respects,  and  he  thought 
the  English  workman  ought  to  feel  under  obligations 
to  the  capitalists  who  used  their  money  in  this  public- 
spirited  way.  These  Englishmen  may  talk  to  foreign- 
ers of  Free  Trade  and  international  peace,  but  when 
they  talk  to  each  other  they  do  not  conceal  the  fact 
that  their  trade  is  industrial  warfare  on  the  part  of  a 
nation,  which  as  long  ago  as  1864  had  machinery 
capable  of  doing  the  work  of  four  hundred  and  fifty 
million  human  beings.  It  must  now  be  not  less  than 
seven  hundred  million. 

One  of  the  w'eapons  by  which  they  seek  to  make 
good  their  contention  in  favor  of  Free  Trade  is  an 
assumption  of  superior  wisdom  and  experience,  which 
entitles  them  to  pose  as  the  economic  instructors  of 
the  rest  of  mankind.  It  is  this  that  makes  them  foreign 
missionaries  to  advise  the  Western  farmer  how  he  is  to 
vote  for  members  of  Congress  and  other  officers  of  the 
American  government.  Now  let  us  see  how^  far  this 
superior  wisdom  has  enabled  them  to  manage  w  ith 
success  the  affairs  of  the  countries  which  have  become 
dependent  upon  their  Empire.  As  we  look,  we  shall 
be  impressed,  I  think,  with  the  fact  that  there  is  at 
times  an  irony  in  the  workings  of  Providence,  which 
allows  people  of  themselves  to  make  a  jest  of  their 
most  confident  pretensions  to  exceptional  wisdom. 

The   first   we   shall   consider  is    India.      When  the 


THE  E  VIDENCE  OF  HI  ST  OR  Y. 


33 


English  first  went  there  they  found  it  a  busy  manu- 
facturing country.  Indeed  it  was  to  buy  Indian  manu- 
factures that  the)'  began  to  go  thither.  Cotton  goods 
were  the  great  staple  of  Indian  manufacture,  and  in 
some  parts  of  the  country  every  man,  woman  and 
child  was  engaged  in  spinning  or  weaving  cotton. 
They  produced  every  grade  of  the  fabric,  from  the 
coarsest  to  some  so  fine  that  a  lady's  dress  could  be 
drawn  through  her  finger-ring.  Their  machinery  was 
of  the  simplest  sort,  a  loom  looking  like  an  accidental 
concatenation  of  sticks  and  strings.  The  industry 
continued  to  flourish  after  the  English  had  become 
masters  of  the  greater  part  of  peninsula,  and  even  after 
the  North  of  England  had  become  a  great  centre  of 
the  manufacture.  But  in  1813,  when  Napoleon  had 
shut  out  English  manufactures  from  the  continent,  and 
the  war  with  America  had  lost  England  our  market 
for  her  wares,  the  cotton-spinners  persuaded  the  home- 
government  to  put  an  end  to  the  protective  duties  which 
had  kept  their  goods  out  of  India.  At  the  same  time 
there  was  no  removal  of  the  absolute  prohibition  of  the 
importation  of  East  Indian  cottons  into  England.  So- 
Bengal  was  flooded  with  the  cottons  made  by  that 
English  machinery,  whose  export  to  India  was  forbid- 
den under  severe  penalties.  The  effect  was  ruin  and 
distress,  for  which,  says  Sir  William  Bentinck,"no  par- 
allel can  be  found  in  the  annals  of  commerce."  Great 
cities  relapsed  into  jungle.  The  people  were  reduced 
to  the  level  of  a  single  industry.  The  bonds  of  asso- 
ciation among  them  were  broken.  They  sank  ever 
deeper  into  poverty  under  the  otherwise  just  and 
peaceful  government  of  England,  until  the  problem  of 
raising  a  revenue  sufficient  for  the  management  of 
3 


34 


c\\vr£A's/vy  lectl 'res. 


public   affairs    became  the    most  difficult  problem  in 
British  finance. 

India  is  now  a  palmary  instance  of  the  misery  that 
can  be  inflicted  on  a  country  by  the  destruction  of 
\-aried  industry  among  its  people.  Tlie  country  has 
nothing"  but  an  impoverished  agriculture,  and  a  few 
petty  trades,  such  as  the  making  of  filagree  ornaments. 
Nothing  else  flourishes  than  the  business  of  the  usurer, 
who  in  the  Southern  parts  of  the  peninsula  had  reduced 
the  ryots  to  a  condition  of  virtual  slavery,  until  the  gov- 
■  ernment  stepped  in  with  a  general  obliteration  of  debt. 
The  dangers  of  such  a  position  are  extreme.  The 
country  has  all  its  eggs  in  one  basket,  and  woe  to  it  if 
that  basket  fall.  Whenever  the  periodical  rains  fail, 
the  district  thus  affected  suffers  from  famines  more 
destructive  than  any  in  its  earlier  history  that  resulted 
from  the  calamities  and  desolations  of  war.  In  the 
famine  of  1876-78  alone,  Miss  Florence  Nightingale 
estimates,  thj  deaths  by  starvation  reached  six  millions. 
And  so  certain  is  the  recurrence  of  this  calamity,  that 
the  Indian  government  has  raised  by  a  special  income- 
tax  levied  on  rich  natives  a  famine  Guarantee  Fund. 

The  poverty  of  the  people  is  so  great,  that  the 
average  income  of  the  ryot  or  peasant  is  put  by  good 
authorities  at  thirty  shillings  a  year,  and  of  this,  the^ 
government  takes  twenty  per  cent  as  a  land  tax.  Even 
this  is  not  enough  to  pay  the  large  salaries  the  English 
officers  and  officials  require  for  doing  duty  in  a  country 
so  unhealthy,  and  so  dangerous  through  the  possibili- 
ties of  native  insurrection.  So  it  is  supplemented  by 
monopolies  of  the  most  objectionable  kind.  Of  the 
opium  monopoly  you  have  heard,  and  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  government's  trade  in  opium  is  promoted 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY. 


35 


by  keeping  China  open  for  the  importation  of  this 
poisonous  drug.  Not  a  whit  better  is  the  monopoly 
of  the  hquor  trade,  by  whose  promotion  the  Hindoo 
is  rapidly  losing  his  chai'acter  as  one  of  the  most 
temperate  of  beings.  And  worst  of  all  is  the  salt 
monopol)'.  The  Hindoo  lives  on  rice,  a  grain  singu- 
larly deficient  in  saline  elements.  He  consumes  large 
quantities  of  fish,  and  much  of  it  in  a  half-rancid  con- 
dition, because  salt  is  too  expensive  to  have  it  prop- 
erl\'  cured.  He  lives  under  a  burning  sun,  and  has  a 
long  sea-coast  around  his  country  ;  but  if  he  be  found 
trying  to  make  any  use  of  this  advantage  to  supply 
himself  with  salt,  the  government  sends  him  to  prison 
for  interfering  with  its  monopoly.  It  used  to  be  argued 
that  the  natives  got  plenty  of  salt  in  spite  of  all  this. 
The  amount  supplied  to  soldiers  detained  in  the  mili- 
tary prisons  was  taken  as  the  basis  of  the  estimate,  and 
it  was  said  that  the  total  annual  consumption,  if  divided 
by  the  population  of  India,  would  give  about  the  same 
amount  for  each  inhabitant.  But  how  was  the  popula- 
tion ascertained  ?  By  estimates  made  in  each  province 
by  the  civil  authorities.  In  1876  they  left  off  guessing 
at  the  population  and  actually  counted  it.  And  they 
found  it  was  greater  by  a  hundred  millions  than  they 
had  supposed.  So  India  must  be  short  in  its  supply 
of  salt  by  the  amount  needed  by  one  hundred  million 
people,  to  say  nothing  of  what  must  be  fed  to  the  cattle, 
who  were  overlooked  in  the  estimates  I  have  men- 
tioned ! 

In  1858,  for  the  sake  of  revenue,  the  Indian  author- 
ities put  a  dut}'  on  imported  cotton  goods,  the  only 
article  of  import  that  was  available  for  the  purpose. 
From  that  time  until  its  repeal  in  1881,  the  English 


36 


a\7/  'ERSITY  LECTURES. 


cotton  spinners  kept  a  constant  outcry  ac^ainst  this 
duty.  As  Indian  cotton  is  too  short  in  the  staple  to 
be  spun  by  machinery  without  a  mixture  of  our 
Ioniser  staple,  a  duty  of  five  per  cent  was  put  on  the 
import  of  American  cotton  as  a  means  of  discourat^ing 
the  manufacture,  while  the  Eui^lish  cotton-spinners  got 
their  American  cotton  free  of  duty.  But,  slight  as 
was  the  duty,  it  sufficed,  with  the  disadxantage  to 
importation  caused  by  the  decline  of  exchange  on 
Calcutta,  to  enable  the  Bengalese  to  make  their 
start.  As  the  prohibition  on  the  export  of  machinery 
had  been  removed,  they  built  and  furnished  factories 
after  the  modern  fashion.  As  half  the  human 
energy  of  India  is  running  to  waste  for  want  of  em- 
ployment, they  had  an  abundant  supply  of  cheap 
labor,  and  could  run  their  factories  seven  days  in  the 
week.  To  meet  the  English  demand  for  the  removal 
of  the  duties,  the  Indian  government  tried  ever\'  way 
of  making  it  as  little  protective  as  possible.  At  last, 
in  the  face  of  protests  from  officials  of  all  kinds,  that 
the  revenue  could  not  be  spared,  the  home-govern- 
ment ordered  its  repeal.  But  it  had  done  its  work. 
The  habit  of  manufacture  on  a  great  scale  had  been 
formed ;  the  industrial  forces  had  been  drilled ;  and 
the  market  in  India  and  even  in  China  and  Japan  had 
been  accustomed  to  the  notion  of  looking  to  India  for 
cottons.  There  is  no  chapter  in  recent  history  that  so 
amply  exemplifies  the  international  benevolence  w  hich 
underlies  English  Free  Trade. 

From  India  we  turn  to  Ireland,  where  Providence 
seems  to  bring  the  irony  still  closer  home  to  the 
English  people  and  their  economists.  Ireland  is  at 
her  own  doors.     It  is  not  a  pagan  nation  at  the  other 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  IHSrOKY. 


\7 


side  of  the  world,  with  unknown  difficuhies  in  the 
way  of  its  peaceful  development.  Here  is  a  people 
who  have  proved  themselves  capable  of  success  in 
eveiy  country  but  their  own,  and  who  seemed  to  be 
doomed  to  perennial  poverty  and  discontent  so  long 
as  England  retains  the  direction  of  their  affairs. 

I  can  imagine  that  I  hear  you  saying,  "  We  are 
tired  of  this  endless  talk  about  Ireland  and  Irish 
grievances  !  "  Well,  as  the  Irish  themselves  say  in 
such  cases,  "  You  may  be  tired  and  begin  again." 
You  are  pretty  certain  to  hear  a  great  deal  more  about 
the  country  and  its  grievances,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's laws  for  the  reconstruction  of  its  land  system. 
And  let  nie  say  that  I  )'ield  to  no  one  in  admiration 
of  the  magnificent  courage  and  conscientiousness  with 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  has  attacked  the  Irish  problem, 
and  that  I  regret  the  unwillingness  of  the  Irish  people 
to  do  justice  to  these  qualities  in  the  man.  At  the 
same  time  I  must  regard  his  legislation  for  the  redress 
of  Irish  grievances  as  predestined  to  failure,  because 
it  attacks  not  the  disease  but  only  its  symptoms. 
What  Ireland  is  suffering  from,  is  not,  as  both  Mr. 
Gladstone  and  Mr.  Parnell  assume,  a  bad  system  of 
land  laws,  but  the  want  of  varied  industry,  in  whose 
absence  any  land  system  must  work  badly. 

Ireland  at  one  time  had  its  full  share  of  manufacturing 
industry.  We  find  Fazio  Degli  Uberti,an  Italian  poet 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  mentioning  her  beautiful 
*'  white  serges"  as  the  finest  woolen  goods  then  known. 
Edward  III.  who  laid  the  foundation  of  the  woolen  in- 
dustry in  England,  fostered  it  equally  in  Ireland.  The 
hand  of  English  repression  was  laid  on  it  first  -by 
Strafford   in   the    reign   of    Charles    I.,  that  English 


38 


(  X/lE/^S/TV  LECTURES. 


woolens  might  not  suffer  by  its  competition  ;  while  he- 
also  promoted  the  linen  manufacture,  \\  hich  competed 
only  with  the  Dutch.  Ormond  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
II.  fostered  both  ;  and  after  the  troubles  of  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1688  the  Irish  woolen  business  was  rising  rapidly 
into  prosperit}'-  and  importance,  thanks  to  the  abundant 
supply  of  the  best  wool  produced  in  Europe.  k 
compliance  with  the  petitions  of  its  English  rival, 
the  business  was  deliberately  strangled  by  laws  passed 
by  the  English  and  the  Irish  parliaments  in  this  reign. 
The  latter  forbade  the  export  of  wool  and  of  woolens 
to  any  country  but  England,  and  the  former  forbade 
their  import  into  England.  Having  lost  one  industr}', 
the  Irish  people  turned  to  others.  "  The  easiness  of  the 
Irish  labor  market,"  says  Earl  Dufferin,"and  the  cheap- 
ness of  provisions  still  giving  us  the  advantage,  even 
though  we  had  to  import  our  materials,  we  ne.xt  made 
a  dash  at  the  silk  business,  but  the  silk  manufacturer 
was  as  pitiless  as  the  wool-stapler.  The  cotton  manu- 
facturer, the  sugar-refiner,  the  soap  and  candle  maker 
(who  especially  dreaded  the  abundance  of  our  kelp), 
and  any  other  trade  or  interest  that  thought  it  worth 
while  to  petition,  was  received  with  the  same  cordiality, 
until  the  most  searching  scrutiny  failed  to  find  a  single 
vent  for  the  hated  industry  of  Ireland  to  respire." 
The  consequence  was  that  the  people  were  driven  to 
the  land,  as  the  only  means  of  getting  a  livelihood. 
The  rack-rent  system  began,  and  in  one  generation  the 
rentals  of  Irish  estates  were  more  than  doubled. 
Swift,  who  was  Irish  in  his  hates  at  least,  denounced 
the  iniquity  of  forbidding  the  country  to  make  the  best 
of  its  own  resources,  and  advised  the  Irish  to  retaliate 
by  burning  everything  England  sent  them  except  her 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY. 


39 


coals.  He  defended  the  people  from  the  charge  of 
idleness,  by  reminding  their  critics  that  English  policy 
had  left  them  nothing  to  do. 

This  state  of  things  continued  until  the  uprising  of 
the  Volunteers  secured  the  independence  of  the  Irish 
Parliament  in  1782.  That  uprising,  like  the  American 
war  of  Independence  with  which  it  coincided,  was 
mainly  a  revolt  against  the  policy  that  was  holding 
Ireland  and  the  Colonies  in  a  state  of  industrial  depend- 
ence upon  the  English  nation  and  its  manufacturers. 
Its  manifesto  was  Mr.  Hely-Hutcheson's  book  "The 
Commercial  Restraints  of  Ireland  Considered,"  which 
a  subservient  Parliament  had  burned  as  a  work  of 
seditious  character.  Its  watchword  was  the  motto 
Napper  Tandy  hung  upon  his  cannon  :  "  Free  Trade 
or  this."  Both  Ireland  and  America  demanded  Free 
Trade,  but  by  that  they  meant  simply  an  end  to  the 
aggrandizement  of  P2ngland  at  the  expense  of  their 
native  industries.  They  meant  that  she  must  take  her 
hands  off  and  give  other  countries  a  chance  to  make 
the  best  of  themselves.  And  when,  after  securing 
their  political  independence,  they  found  her  capital 
gave  her  the  power  to  maintain  the  monopoly  that  her 
political  dominance  had  established,  they  both  defended 
themselves  against  this  by  adopting  Protective  Tariffs. 
The  Irish  Tariff  was  adopted  in  1783,  and  laid  heavy 
duties  on  imports  from  England  as  well  as  other 
countries.  It  continued  in  force  until  1801.  It  found 
the  habit  of  manufacture  all  but  extinct  in  Ireland, 
except  in  the  North-East  counties,  where  the  linen- 
manufacture  had  been  always  fostered  by  bounties  and 
protective  duties.  It  was  opposed  with  great  deter- 
mination by  statesmen  who  scoffed  at  the  notion  oC 


40 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 


taxing  the  country  into  growing  rich.  But  under  its 
influence  the  woolen  industry  of  the  South  and  West 
revived,  and  the  Irisli  people  began  to  emerge  out  of 
their  poverty  and  uniformity  of  occupation.  "  Black 
Jack  Fitzgibbon,"  the  Karl  of  Clare,  had  resisted  the 
passage  of  the  law  with  all  the  energy  of  his  powerful 
but  ill-regulated  mind.  But  in  1798  he  said,  "  There 
is  not  a  nation  on  the  face  of  the  habitable  globe  which 
has  advanced  in  cultivation,  in  agriculture,  in  manu- 
factures with  the  same  rapidity  in  the  same  period  as 
Ireland."  The  Whig  statesman  Lord  Plunket  describes 
Ireland  at  this  time  as  seeing  "  her  trade,  her  manufac- 
tures thriving  beyond  the  hope  or  example  of  any 
other  country  of  her  extent."  Mr.  (afterwards  Judge) 
Webb,  in  a  pamphlet  of  1798,  said  that  in  fifteen  years 
the  agriculture,  the  commerce  and  the  manufactures  of 
Ireland  had  swelled  to  an  amount  that  the  mo.st 
sanguine  friends  of  Ireland  would  not  have  dared  to  prog- 
nosticate. The  revenue  had  increased  to  three  or  even 
four  times  its  former  volume,  without  any  increase  in 
the  burdens  of  taxation.  And  when  the  first  proposal 
for  a  legislative  union  with  England  was  made  in  1 799, 
it  was  rejected  in  an  address  from  the  Irish  House  of 
Commons  to  the  King,  in  which  they  say,  "  In  manu- 
factures any  attempt  it  makes  to  offer  any  benefit  which 
we  do  not  now  enjoy,  is  vain  and  delusive ;  and 
whatever  effect  it  is  to  have,  that  effect  will  be  to  our 
injury.  Most  of  the  duties  on  imports,  which  operate 
as  a  protection  to  our  manufactures,  are,  under  its  pro- 
visions, to  be  either  removed  or  reduced  immediately ; 
and  those  which  will  be  reduced,  are  to  cease  entirely 
at  a  limited  time.  .  .  .  Many  of  our  manufactures 
owe  their  existence  to  the  protection  of  these  duties, 


THE  E  VIDEXCE  OF  HISTOR  Y. 


41 


and  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  human  wisdom  to  foresee 
any  precise  time  when  they  may  be  able  to  thrive 
without  them."  The  Treaty  of  Union  was  carried  by 
wholesale  bribery,  one  year  later,  and  all  the  ill  effects 
that  were  foreseen  followed  with  it. 

The  Continental  System  of  the  first  Napoleon  had 
shut  the  markets  of  Europe  a  ^"ainst  English  manufac- 
tures at  the  date  of  the  Union,  and  that  of  Ireland  was 
the  only  one  that  was  obtained  to  replace  them.  The 
repression  of  Irish  manufactures,  begun  in  the  previous 
century  by  legislation,  was  again  completed  by  "  the 
tyrannous  power  of  capital."  The  export  of  woolens, 
which  in  1792  had  amounted  to  three  hundred  and 
sixty  thousand  yards,  fell  off  after  the  Union  to  twenty 
thousand  yards.  As  late  as  1822  there  were  still  nine 
thousand  five  hundred  persons  engaged  in  the  manufact- 
ure; by  1839  there  were  but  one  thousand  three  hundred 
and  twenty-one.  The  cotton  manufacture  had  furnished 
employment  to  thirteen  thousand  five  hundred  people; 
by  1879  the  number  was  reduced  to  one  thousand  six 
hundred  and  twenty.  In  the  silk  business  six  thou- 
sand persons  were  employed  at  the  Union;  by  1879 
the  number  was  one  hundred  and  fifty-two.  A  similar 
fate  befel  glove-making,  stocking-weaving,  calico-print- 
ing, and  every  other  manufacture  that  had  sprung  up 
under  the  protection  of  the  Tariff  of  1783. 

Destitution  became  general  in  the  Irish  towns;  and 
throughout  the  country, — except  in  the  North- Eastern 
counties,  which  were  comparatively  prosperous, — the 
people  were  driven  back  upon  the  land,  and  forced  to 
compete  with  each  other  for  the  possession  of  the 
poorest  bit  of  soil.  The  periodic  famines  which  deso- 
late countries  engaged  only  in  the  production  of  food 


42 


(  Xn-EKSJTV  LECTURES. 


warned  I^iiglish  statesmen  of  the  growing  povcrt)'  of 
the  kingdom,  but  the  warning  was  unheeded.  At  last 
in  1846  the  staff  of  bread  was  broken  in  a  single  night, 
the  fatal  5th  of  August,  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
lay  down  to  die.  Yet  in  those  three  years  of  horror 
that  followed,  Ireland  exported  each  year  food  to  the 
value  of  iJ" 1 5 ,000,000.  And  this  has  gone  on  every 
year  since.  In  1879  the  aid  of  the  civilized  world  was 
invoked  to  keep  the  people  from  starving  along  the 
West  coast.  In  our  Philadelphia  committee,  the  ques- 
tion was  asked  by  the  American  members  "What  kind 
of  food  shall  we  send  to  Ireland?"  Those  of  us  who 
were  of  Irish  birth  answered,  "  Send  none  at  all.  There 
is  a  superabundance  of  food  in  Ireland.  Remit  money, 
and  the  food  that  else  must  be  sent  out  of  the  country 
to  pay  rents  and  buy  articles  of  manufacture,  will  be 
retained  and  given  to  the  hungry."  Because  of  the 
ruin  of  her  manufactures  by  Free  Trade  with  England, 
Ireland  has  to  export  food  enough  to  pay  for  nearly 
every  article  of  necessity,  convenience  or  luxury,  food 
excepted,  which  is  used  b}-  rich  or  poor,  and  also 
enough  to  pay  the  rents  consumed  by  her  non-resident 
landlords  in  London  or  Paris.  Every  sloop,  steamer 
and  boat  that  leaves  the  East  coast  is  loaded  to  the 
gunwale  with  food.  In  1882,  which  was  almost  a 
famine  year,  five  of  the  principal  crops  of  Ireland  pro- 
duced nearly  eight  pounds  of  food  a  day  for  every 
man,  woman  and  child  in  Ireland  ;  and  this  did  not 
include  beef,  dairy  products,  fish  or  garden  crops  of 
any  sort.  Yet  we  are  told  that  Ireland  is  overpopulated, 
and  that  the  wholesale  deportation  of  her  people  is 
the  only  remedy  for  the  evils  from  which  she  is  suf- 
fering ! 


THE  EVIDENCE   OE  HISTORY.  a,-> 

These  facts  should  make  intelligible  my  criticism 
upon  Mr.  Gladstone's  Irish  legislation,  that  he  is 
dealing  with  the  symptoms  and  not  with  the  disease. 
His  cure  for  Irish  evils  is  laws  for  the  alteration  of 
land  system.  Now  it  is  true  that  the  Irish  situation 
is  on  J  which  gives  the  land-owner  an  immense  power 
over  those  who  have  to  rent  land,  that  is  to  say  over 
the  great  part  of  the  Irish  people.  And  whate\cr 
gives  men  an  excessive  power  over  their  fellows,  is 
certain  to  tempt  to  abuse  of  that  power,  and  to  bring  out 
whatever  meanness  and  baseness  there  is  in  our  human 
nature.  It  might,  however,  have  been  presumed  that 
the  resources  of  civilized  legislation  would  have  fur- 
nished some  means  of  destroying  this  excess  of  power, 
without  interfering  with  the  rights  of  property  in 
land,  and  forbidding  the  landlord  to  take  such  price 
as  he  can  get  in  the  land-market  for  his  farms.  But 
this  is  what  Mr.  Gladstone  has  done  by  the  Irish 
Land  Law,  which  sets  up  a  court  to  determine  what 
is  a  fair  rent  for  a  piece  of  land,  and  lays  a  heavy  fine 
upon  the  landlord  who  evicts  the  tenant  who  is  paying^ 
this  fair  rent.  You  would  not  endure  such  a  law  in 
Massachusetts,  and  we  would  not  in  Pennsylvania. 
We  believe  in  free  contract  between  landlord  and 
tenant.  But  say  the  English,  the  cases  are  widi,^ly 
different.  "  Free  contract,"  says  The  Spectator,  "  im- 
plies free  contractors ;  howex'er,  partly  from  histor- 
ical circumstances,  but  chiefly  from  the  ab.sence  of 
alternative  employments,  the  poorer  tenants  of  Ireland 
are  not  free  ;  at  least  one  half  the  adult  population 
are  compelled  by  the  coercion  of  hunger  to  agree  to 
any  terms  which  will  secure  them  the  use  of  the  soil." 
In  other  words,  the  Irish  tenant  would  be  emancipated 


44 


UXrVRRSITY  L ECTURES. 


and  made  a  freeman  by  the  policy  which  would  create 
on  Irish  soil  those  "  alternative  occupations,"  whose 
presence  would  relieve  the  pressure  upon  the  land- 
market,  without  any  socialistic  meddling  with  the 
rights  of  property.  Are  there  no  means  of  creating 
such  "  alternative  occupations "  where  they  do  not 
exist?  Edward  III.  thought  there  were;  Cromwell 
thought  so ;  the  Stuart  kings  and  the  first  three  kings 
of  the  present  house  thought  so.  But  they  have 
vanished  out  of  "  the  resources  of  civilization  "  for 
English  statesmen. 

Even  as  regards  the  land,  this  new  legislation  must 
be  a  failure,  unless  there  is  a  restoration  of  Irish 
manufactures.  It  is  assumed  on  both  sides  that  the 
conversion  of  the  Irish  tenant  into  a  land-owner,  or 
something  nearly  the  same  as  that,  must  result  in  his 
permanent  prosperity.  The  truth  is  that  the  Irish 
land-owner  has  fared  nearly  as  badly  under  the  ruin 
of  the  manufactures  of  the  country,  as  has  the  tenant. 
I  can  give  you  the  names  of  at  least  a  dozen  of  Irish 
free-holders  within  the  range  of  my  own  knowledge, 
who  found  Irish  farming  an  intolerable  business, 
although  they  paid  no  rent  but  a  peppercorn  or  a 
farthing  an  acre  to  the  Crown,  and  who  ha\'e  left  the 
country  to  find  a  home  in  America.  My  own  father 
was  one  of  these.  And  the  prosperity  these  persons 
have  had  in  whatever  walk  of  life  they  have  chosen  in 
this  land  of  their  adoption,  has  been  such  as  to  prove 
that  they  did  not  fail  to  get  on  in  Ireland  through  any 
want  of  industry  or  perseverance.  Have  even  the 
much-abused  landlords  prospered  under  this  system, 
for  whose  evils  they  are  held  responsible?  Great 
numbers  of  them  have  been  absolutely  beggared.    The 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY. 


45 


famine  of  1846  found  in  the  poor-houses  of  the  South- 
West  men  who  had  been  the  lords-heutenant  of  their 
counties.  In  the  decade  1 848-1 859  one  third  of  the 
soil  of  Ireland  was  sold  in  the  Encumbered  Estatjs 
Court,  and  mostly  at  a  fraction  of  its  market  valu  •. 
It  was  bought  up  by  people  like  Mr.  Bence-Joncs, 
whose  utter  want  of  sympathy  with  the  Irish  people 
stands  in  strong  contrast  to  the  character  of  many  of 
the  people  they  succeeded,  and  constitutes  one  of 
the  most  serious  difficulties  of  the  present  situation. 

The  worst  failure  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  policy  is  its 
failure  to  do  anything  for  the  great  multitude  who 
have  no  land,  no  employment  and  no  prospect  of 
getting  either.  The  Irish  correspondent  of  TJic  (Lon- 
don) Guardian  in  1882  reported  that  there  were  nine 
hundred  thousand  young  people  in  the  "  proclaimed 
districts  "  of  Ireland,  who  were  in  this  sad  condition. 
I  wonder  what  our  American  Free  Traders  would 
do  with  Ireland,  if  they  had  the  responsibility  of 
governing  it.  I  have  no  doubt  they  are  glad  enough 
to  have  no  such  responsibility !  But  we  Protectionists 
of  America  would  not  hesitate  to  undertake  to  make 
the  Irish  people  prosperous  and  contented,  if  we  had 
the  chance.  We  would  apply  to  her  case  the  remedies 
which  have  cured  similar  evils  in  this  country,  with 
the  confidence  that  the  result  would  be  the  same. 

It  may  be  said  that  America  and  Ireland  are  very 
different  countries,  and  that  analogies  between  them 
are  misleading.  It  is  true  that  they  now  are  very  dif- 
ferent, but  it  is  not  true  that  they  were  so  different  a 
century  ago.  At  that  time  they  were  suffering  from 
the  same  repressive  and  selfish  policy  of  England's 
part;  and  what  difference  there  was,  was  probably  in 


^^6  LW/rEKs/jy  lecil  'res. 

faxor  of  Ireland.  America  was  permitted  to  carry  on 
only  such  industries  as  suited  the  Mother  Country  to 
have  established  in  her  colonies.  Thus  the  making 
of  pig  iron  "was  encouraged,  because  the  colonies  had 
plenty  of  the  charcoal,  which  in  those  days  was  used 
exclusively  in  smelting  iron;  but  the  manufacture  of 
steel  was  strictly  forbidden.  In  the  pineries  of  New 
Jersey  there  still  are  found  remains  of  the  works,  in 
which  the  steel  manufacture  was  carried  on  secretly 
and  far  away  from  the  observation  of  English  ofificials. 
A  hat  factory  in  one  of  the  colonies  was  declared  a 
nuisance  by  the  British  Parliament,  and  the  export  of 
hats  from  one  colony  to  another,  at  a  later  time  was 
forbidden.  In  1765  the  emigration  of  skilled  artizans 
to  the  colonies  was  forbidden  by  law.  As  a  conse- 
quence of  this  policy  the  colonists  were  deeply  in  debt 
to  the  traders  in  England.  One  English  authority 
calculated  that  they  got  not  above  a  fourth  of  the 
advantage  of  their  own  products,  and  said  it  was  Eng- 
land's best  policy  not  to  put  too  many  difficulties  in 
their  way,  but  to  encourage  them  to  go  on  cheerfully ! 
By  1774  the  cheerfulness  had  come  to  an  end,  and 
the  struggle  for  independence  began.  It  found  its 
motive  as  much  in  the  necessity  for  the  diversification 
of  American  industry,  as  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
political  rights  of  the  people.  One  of  the  measures 
of  resistance  was  the  agreement  not  to  import  any 
more  goods  from  England,  and  in  1774  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  signed  such  an  agreement  for  the 
whole  country.  Four  months  before  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  voted,  Congress  recommended  the 
colonial  legislatures  to  exert  their  utmost  endeax'ors  to 
promote  the  culture  of  flax,  hemp  and  cotton  and  the 


THE  EVIDENCE   OE  HISTORY.  ^y 

growth  of  wool  in  tlic  United  Colonies ;  and  to  take 
the  earliest  measures  for  establishing  in  each  colony 
a  Society  for  the  improvement  of  agriculture,  arts, 
manufactures  and  commerce  ;  and  forthwith  to  con- 
sider of  the  ways  and  means  of  introducing  and  im- 
proving the  manufacture  of  duck,  sail-cloth  and  steel. 

Much  of  the  sufferings  of  the  American  armies 
during  the  war  for  independence  grew  out  of  the  un- 
provided condition  of  the  country,  which  had  not  a 
single  one  of  the  manufactures  needed  for  the  equip- 
ment of  an  army.  As  the  war  proceeded  these  were 
established  on  such  a  scale  as  made  the  country  much 
less  defenceless.  With  the  return  of  peace,  and  the 
resumption  of  trade  with  the  Mother  Countr)-,  all  these 
new  industries  were  ruined.  The  general  government 
had  no  power  to  restrain  imports  by  imposing  duties  ; 
the  several  states  did  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the 
state  boundaries  into  custom  house  lines,  and  to  take 
as  much  advantage  of  each  other  as  of  the  sti-anger. 
The  American  manufacturer  was  confined  to  the  little 
compass  of  his  own  state,  and  had  not  the  market 
necessary  for  the  development  of  his  business.  As  a 
consequence  the  country  began  to  sink  to  even  a  lower 
level  than  it  had  held  before  the  war,  and  the  spread 
of  discontent  and  of  distress  was  such  as  to  threaten 
the  overthrow  of  the  social  system.  While  quarrels 
over  trade  were  drawing  the  colonies  farther  apart,  the 
presence  of  insurrection  seemed  to  indicate  the  speedy 
ruin  of  the  new  nation,  and  the  possible  return  of 
its  elements  to  the  British  Empire.  It  was  to  save 
the  country  from  this  fate  that  the  new  Constitution 
was  adopted,  after  a  futile  attempt  to  so  modify  the 
Articles  of  Confederation  as   to   transfer  the  power  to 


48 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 


levy  duties  on  imports  from  the  states  to  the  nation. 
The  Constitution  gave  the  national  Congress  power  to 
"  lay  and  collect  taxes,  duties,  imposts  and  excises," 
and  specified  as  the  purpose  for  which  these  were  to 
be  laid  not  only  the  payment  of  the  nation's  debts  and 
the  provision  for  the  public  defence,  but  also  "to  pro- 
vide for  the  general  welfare  of  the  United  States."  I  low 
this  clause  w^as  understood  by  its  authors  was  shown 
by  the  first  Congress  which  met  under  the  Constitu- 
tion. It  passed  a  Tariff  law  reported  by  James  Madi- 
son, and  in  the  preamble  it  was  said  that  one  of  the 
objects  was  "the  encouragement  and  protection  of 
manufactures." 

The  new  Tariff  was  drawn  on  very  modest  lines,  and 
showed  how  limited  were  the  industrial  ambitions  of 
the  fathers  of  the  Republic.  Neither  wooleu,  nor  iron, 
nor  cotton  manufactures  are  specified  in  its  lists  of 
protected  articles.  As  a  consequence,  the  Haitford 
woolen  mill,  which  supplied  Gen.  Washington  with  the 
suit  in  which  he  was  inaugurated,  was  sold  out  by  the 
sheriff  in  his  second  administration.  Nor  were  the 
duties  high,  but  the  cost  of  transportation  and  the 
interruption  of  commerce  by  the  great  wars  of  that 
time  supplemented  them  heavily.  Among  the  articles 
laid  under  a  duty  was  cotton.  This  was  not  yet  an 
important  staple  in  America  ;  it  had  been  grown  chiefly 
to  make  clothing  for  the  slave  population.  But  the 
American  indigo  business  had  been  transferred  to 
Bengal  during  the  war  for  independence,  and  the 
Southern  states  were  casting  about  for  some  article  to 
take  its  place.  So  for  a  goodly  number  of  years  the 
women  of  New  England  paid  a  higher  price  for  the 
West  India    cotton  they  twisted    into  lamp-wicks  or 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY. 


49 


spun  and  wove  into  sheetings,  in  order  that  the  South 
might  have  a  chance  to  retrieve  its  fortunes.  When 
at  last  the  cotton-gin  invented  by  a  Yankee  school- 
master had  put  American  cotton-growing  on  its  feet 
the  world  was  to  see  the  cotton-planter  of  America 
joining  hands  with  the  English  cotton-spinner  to  put 
down  the  policy  to  which  each  industry  owed  its  very 
existence  ! 

What  was  defective  in  the  first  Tariff  was  corrected 
to  some  extent  by  amendment  while  Alexander 
Hamilton  remained  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury. 
But  the  general  tendency  of  American  legislation  took 
a  new  direction  with  the  accession  to  power  in  i8oi  of 
a  party  which  believed  in  minimizing  the  powers  and 
the  revenues  of  the  national  government.  No  farther 
advance  was  made  towards  making  the  country  self- 
sufficient  or  creating  those  resources  which  fit  a  nation 
for  war.  As  a  consequence  the  second  war  with  Great 
Britain  again  found  America  altogether  unprepared  to 
equip  or  furnish  an  army  ;  and  the  disastrous  conduct 
of  that  war  by  land  was  very  largely  due  to  this  defect. 
Even  salt  was  not  to  be  had,  and  the  blankets  and 
tents  for  the  regiments  could  not  be  furnished  by  any 
American  producer.  During  the  war  and  for  a  year 
after  the  return  of  peace  all  duties  were  doubled,  and 
as  a  consequence  there  was  a  rapid  growth  of  manu- 
factures, especially  in  the  Middle  States.  But  with  the 
return  of  peace,  English  exports  to  America  rose  to 
four  times  the  amount  sent  here  in  any  previous  year. 
It  was  on  this  occasion  that  Mr.  Brougham  congratu- 
lated his  country  on  the  fact  that  their  losses  in 
America  through  excessive  exports  would  "  stifle  in 
the  cradle  those  rising  manufactures  in  the  United 
4 


■50  US'IVERSUY  LECTURES. 

States  w  Inch  the  war  had  forced  into  existence  con- 
trary to  the  natural  course  of  things."  (Hansard, 
xxxiii.  1099.) 

There  was  no  disposition  on  the  part  of  Congress 
to  acquiesce  in  this  "  stifling"  process.  Especially  the 
South  was  agreed  to  resist  it.  The  British  Tariff  still 
discriminated  in  favor  of  cotton  grown  in  India  and 
the  British  colonies,  to  the  exclusion  of  American. 
During  the  war  there  had  been  such  a  growth  of 
cotton  manufacture  as  furnished  employment  to  one 
hundred  thousand  people,  and  furnished  a  steady 
market  for  Southern  cotton.  So  Mr.  John  C.  Calhoun 
and  the  other  representatives  of  that  section  gave  their 
support  generally  to  the  proposition  that  American 
industry  should  be  protected,  and  they  helped  to  pass 
the  Tariff-law  of  18 16.  The  duties  it  imposed  averaged 
about  sixteen  per  cent  ad  valorem,  which  was  thought 
to  be  sufficient,  because  the  authors  of  the  measure 
had  no  conception  of  the  altered  conditions  of  produc- 
tion and  exchange.  I  shall  tell  the  result  in  a  quota- 
tion from  a  Free  Trade  writer  : 

"The  Tariff  of  18 16  raised  the  price  at  first,  and 
was  all  the  encouragement  that  was  desired.  But  in 
a  little  while  another  effect  followed.  The  foreign 
manufacturers  contrived  to  reduce  the  cost  of  producing 
their  goods,  by  improved  machinery  and  other  means, 
and  submitted  to  a  reduction  of  their  profits  in  order 
to  keep  as  much  as  they  could  of  the  American  trade 
by  counteracting  the  Tariff;  while  the  American 
manufacturers,  who  could  only  supply  a  part  of  the 
demand  for  broad-cloths,  found  their  profits  diminished 
by  the  rise  in  the  costs  of  labor  and  subsistence,  which 
was  caused  h\  the  diversion  of  labor  from   its  natural 


THE  EVIDENCE   OE  HISTORY.  51 

channels.  To  this  was  added  the  more  abundant 
capital  of  the  foreign  manufacturers,  enabling  them  to 
give  longer  credits  ;  their  wider  access  to  established 
markets  enabling  them  to  accept  a  lower  rate  of  profits; 
and  the  great  advantage  of  being  already  established, 
with  machinery  all  built,  trade  all  regulated,  and  in  the 
midst  of  a  superabundant  supply  of  labor,  which  had 
no  competing  opening,  and  which  therefore  could  be 
had  for  the  asking,  at  the  lowest  wages  on  which 
pi^ople  could  live."     [The  League,  May,  1868.) 

So  the  sheriff  had  a  busy  time  for  some  years  under 
that  well-meaning  but  futile  Tariff  of  1816  ;  and  where 
the  factories  did  not  stop  work,  they  went  on  only 
because  the  new  owners  had  bought  them  for  a  fraction 
of  what  they  had  cost,  and  therefore  could  afford  to 
keep  them  going.  Some  kinds  of  enterprise  stopped. 
The  improvement  of  American  sheep  had  received  a 
great  impulse  during  the  war,  and  as  much  as  a 
thousand  dollars  had  been  paid  for  a  ram  lamb.  But 
now  blooded  sheep  were  sold  off  at  a  dollar,  and  great 
multitudes  were  slaughtered  for  their  pelts. 

Every  president  went  on  urging  the  effective  pro- 
tection of  American  manufactures  as  a  measure  of 
national  defence,  no  less  than  as  a  means  to  national 
prosperity;  but  it  was  not  until  1824  that  a  really 
protective  Tariff  was  enacted,  with  duties  averaging 
thirty-eight  per  cent  ad  valorem.  It  was  amended  in 
1828  chiefly  by  increasing  the  duties  on  wool  and 
woolens,  and  was  reduced  in  1832  without  detracting 
from  its  protectionist  character.  By  the  admission  of 
even  its  enemies  it  enabled  a  great  advance  in  the 
diversification  of  American  industry  and  in  the  elevation 
of  the  nation  out  of  the  poverty  of  the  years  which 


52 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 


followed  the  war.  Henry  Clay  pointed  to  the  seven 
years  before  1824  as  the  most  distressing,  and  the 
seven  after  that  year  as  the  most  prosperous,  in  the 
n^ition's  history. 

But  the  prosperity  was  not  equally  diffused.  Those 
states  which  still  retained  negro  slavery  had  expected 
that  their  closeness  to  the  source  of  the  cotton  supply, 
and  their  abundance  of  cheap  labor,  would  serve  to 
give  them  if  not  a  pre-eminence,  at  least  an  equality 
with  the  rest  of  the  country  as  manufacturing  common- 
wealths. For  this  reason  they  had  supported  the 
Tariff  of  1 8 16,  when  New  England  had  opposed  it  in 
the  supposed  interests  of  her  commerce.  But  their 
hopes  had  been  disappointed.  They  found  that  slave 
labor  was  not  equal  to  the  nice  work  required  in 
manufactures,  and  that  the  poor  whites  of  the  South 
would  not  work,  so  long  as  the  existence  of  slavery 
made  work  a  badge  of  social  inferiority.  So  the  Tariff 
did  its  work  chiefly  in  the  Middle  and  Eastern  States, 
while  the  abundant  water-power  of  the  South  fell  idly 
over  the  rocks.  On  the  other  hand  the  great  improve- 
ment in  the  quality  of  American  cotton  had  obliged 
the  English  government  to  cease  discriminating  against 
its  importation,  sincj  that  di-scrimination  placed  Lan- 
cashire at  a  disadvantage  in  competing  for  the  markets 
of  the  world.  So  the  South  was  no  longer  depemKnt 
upon  the  Northern  market,  and  began  to  see  the  ques- 
tion of  Free  Trade  in  a  new  light.  There  arose  that 
strange  alliance  between  the  American  slave  interest 
and  the  English  cotton  interest,  which  came  to  an  end 
only  with  the  Civil  War.  It  was  now  that  the  cotton 
states  made  the  discovery  that  Protection  was  a  breach 
of  the  Constitution,  and  oppressive  to  their  interests. 


THE  EVIDENCE   OF  HISTORY. 


53 


The  attempt  of  South  Carolina,  with  the  support  of 
three  other  states,  to  nullify  the  Tariff  of  1832  was 
suppressed  by  the  courageous  action  of  the  President. 
But  it  led  to  the  Compromise  Tariff  of  1S33,  which 
provided  for  the  gradual  reduction  of  all  the  duties  on 
imports,  until  by  1842  they  should  stand  at  a  level  of 
twenty  per  cent.  This  agreement  was  accepted  by  the 
manufacturers  at  the  persuasion  of  Mr.  Clay,  and 
because  they  were  confident  that  the  improvements  they 
had  made  in  machinery  would  enable  them  to  hold 
their  own  without  much  protection.  The  result  showed 
that  they  had  overestimated  their  strength.  A  time 
of  great  depression  and  business  disaster  followed,  of 
which  the  Tariff  reductions  were  not  the  sole  but  a 
chief  cause.  When  1842  came,  there  had  been  a 
political  revolution.  Mr.  Harrison  had  been  elected 
by  the  Whig  Protectionists  to  the  presidency,  and  his 
untimely  death  did  not  prevent  the  passage  of  a 
thoroughly  protectionist  Tariff  in  1842. 

Before  this  Tariff  was  passed,  the  situation  of  both 
capital  and  labor  had  been  wretched  in  the  extreme. 
The  monuments  of  the  era  may  be  found  in  the  soup- 
houses  of  our  great  cities,  which  were  devised  to  keep 
the  working  population  from  starving.  The  govern- 
ment's revenue  had  fallen  so  low,  that  it  was  obliged 
to  seek  a  loan  in  Europe,  and  sought  in  vain,  although 
a  few  years  before  it  had  distributed  a  much  larger 
sum  of  surplus  revenue  among  the  states.  There 
were  some  who  ridiculed  the  idea  that  this  distress 
could  be  even  alleviated  by  increasing  the  duties  on 
imports,  and  among  these  was  Mr.  Henry  C.  Carey, 
whose  failure  as  a  paper-maker  under  the  pressure  of 
the  times   had   not  converted  him  from  Free  Trade 


54 


(  XJlERSJ-rV  LECTURES. 


opinions.  But  what  they  declared  to  be  impossible 
was  done.  Mr.  Nathan  Appleton  says  that  the  Tariff 
of  1842  "adopted  with  the  greatest  difficulty,  carried 
almost  by  miracle,  changed,  as  if  by  enchantment,  the 
whole  scene.  In  the  short  space  of  a  year,  the  whole 
country  passed  from  the  depths  of  suffering,  idleness 
and  depression,  to  a  state  of  the  most  active  prosperitv- 
and  the  fullest  confidence.  No  one  capable  of  tracing 
cause  and  effect  can  doubt  that  the  change  was  the 
direct  and  immediate  result  of  the  Tariff." 

I  think  its  greatest  achievement  was  the  conversion 
of  Mr.  Carey  by  the  undeniable  evidence  its  results 
furnished  for  the  vindication  of  the  protective  policy. 

But  Free  Trade  was  "in  the  air"  in  those  days. 
The  victory  of  the  Anti-Corn-Law  League  in  England 
in  1846  produced  a  profound  impression  in  America. 
The  notion  became  common  that  the  path  to  prosperity 
had  been  thrown  open  to  us  in  the  repeal  of  the  Eng- 
lish import  duties  on  our  grain.  Mr.  Walker,  the  new 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  lectured  Congress  on  the 
wisdom  of  the  Laisscz  Faire  policy.  Western  votes 
were  added  to  those  of  the  South  in  support  of  Free 
Trade.  The  result  was  the  Horizontal  Tariff  of  1846, 
which  was  passed  by  a  party  vote  and  in  defiance  of 
pledges  given  at  the  election  of  1844.  It  was  "neither 
fish,  flesh,  fowl,  nor  good  salt  herring."  It  put  almo.st 
all  duties  at  one  of  three  ad  valorem  rates,  without 
any  intelligent  reference  to  either  revenue  or  protection. 
Some  industries  got  a  fair  degree  of  protection ;  a  few 
got  too  much  ;  the  majority  got  too  little  or  none  at 
all.  Of  the  latter  class  was  the  iron  business.  The 
ri.se  of  the  railroad  system  had  made  this  metal  -of 
prime  importance.     American  producers  were  furnish- 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY. 


55- 


ing  iron  rails  at  ;$6o  a  ton,  while  the  English  maker 
offered  them  at  $40  a  ton.  The  reduction  to  thirty 
per  cent  ad  valorem  enabled  the  foreigner  to  secure 
an  entrance  to  the  American  market,  and  to  undersell 
the  home  producer,  especially  as  the  great  crash  of 
railroad  speculation  in  England  had  diminished  the 
English  demand.  Our  furnaces  began  to  stop  work- 
ing, and  the  Iron-men  met  in  Convention  in  1850  to 
lay  their  grievances  before  Congress.  In  their  Memo- 
rial, prepared  by  Mr.  Stephen  Colwell,  they  warned  the 
country  that  the  price  England  asked  for  any  article 
would  depend  a  good  deal  upon  the  amount  of  our 
dependence  upon  her  for  our  suppl}^  and  that  if  we 
made  ourselves  dependent  upon  her  for  iron,  she  would 
advance  the  price  as  soon  as  she  had  got  our  home 
competition  out  of  the  way.  The  prediction  was  ful- 
filled to  the  letter.  In  a  short  time  we  were  paying 
her  $80  a  ton  for  iron  rails,  the  duty  on  which  was 
more  at  the  new  ad  valoreju  rates  than  had  been  levied 
by  the  Tariff  of  1842  by  a  specific  duty.  But  it  gave 
no  protection  in  the  sense  of  assuring  the  capitalists' 
investment  in  this  industr}^ 

As  if  the  Tariff  of  1846  were  not  bad  enough,  Con- 
gress in  1857  made  a  horizontal  reduction  of  twenty- 
five  per  cent  in  all  its  duties.  The  opponents  of  the 
reduction  predicted  that  it  would  cause  a  financial 
crash,  and,  as  many  of  us  still  remember,  their  predic- 
tion was  fulfilled.  But  they  got  no  hearing,  for,  as 
Mr.  Greeley  sorrowfully  said,  the  world  seemed  to  have 
gone  ov^er  to  Free  Trade.  An  enthusiastic  member 
of  Congress  from  New  England  proclaimed  his  hope 
of  seeing  every  custom-house  abolished  from  the  face 
of  the  earth.     But  one  man  held  out;  against  the  flood 


56 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 


of  tendency.  Mr.  Carey  said  to  Mr.  Greeley,  "If  you 
will  wait  a  little,  you  will  see  the  world  coming  back." 
They  both  lived  to  see  that, — to  see,  as  The  London 
Times  expressed  it,  "a  flood  of  protectionist  sentiment 
sweep  round  the  world." 

The  experiences  of  1857  helped  this  part  of  the 
world  to  come  back  from  its  rush  into  Free  Trade.  The 
country  was  plunged  into  a  depression  nearly  as  great 
as  that  of  1837.  Although  already  heavily  in  debt  to 
English  manufacturers,  we  increased  our  import  of 
some  important  articles  three  hundred  per  cent.  A  great 
body  of  workmen  were  thrown  out  of  employment. 
The  revenue  fell  from  a  surplus  to  a  deficit,  and  in 
a  time  of  peace  the  treasury  had  to  borrow  money 
for  current  expenses  at  usurious  rates.  President 
Buchanan  called  attention  to  the  harm  that  had  been 
done  by  the  reduction  of  duties  and  suggested  their 
restoration.  But  Congress  was  too  much  occupied 
with  the  closing  scenes  of  the  great  struggle  between 
slavery  and  freedom  to  give  the  matter  much  attention. 

In  1 861  the  Republican  party  came  into  power, 
pledged  by  its  national  declaration  of  principles  to 
legislate  on  protectionist  linos.  The  Morrill  Tariff  of 
that  year  was  the  fulfilment  of  promises  made  to  the 
public  and  especially  to  the  laboring  part  of  the  public, 
much  rather  than  to  the  special  representatives  of  the 
manufacturing  interests.  Many  of  these  were  timid, 
and  wanted  to  be  let  alone  in  the  course  they  were 
moving  in.  But  the  feeling  of  the  Northern  people 
and  the  necessities  of  the  war,  which  had  already 
befjun,  suc:"crested  a  bolder  course. 

The  period  of  protection  thus  begun  is  the  longest 
of   persistence    in   any   one   policy   that  the  country 


THE  EVIDENCE  OF  HISTORY. 


57 


has  had.  That  policy  is  challenged  now  to  justify 
itself  by  its  works  at  the  bar  of  public  opinion.  We 
are  not  afraid  of  that  test.  We  ask  your  attention  to 
its  broad  results. 

It  has  raised  the  average  of  our  national  wealth 
from  $514  a  head  (slaves  included)  in  1850,  to  $870 
a  head  in  1880. 

It  has  increased  the  value  of  our  manufactures  five 
hundred  per  cent,  and  that  of  our  foreign  commerce 
in  the  same  ratio,  while  the  commerce  of  England 
increased  but  three  hundred  and  fifty  per  cent. 

It  has  secured  higher  wages  to  our  workmen  and 
better  prices  to  our  farmers,  without  increasing  to 
either  the  cost  of  staple  manufactures,  as  is  shown  by 
comparing  the  prices  of  textiles  and  hardwares  before 
and  since  i860. 

It  has  diversified  our  industries  and  raised  our 
people  out  of  that  uniformity  of  occupation  which  is 
the  mark  of  a  low  industrial  development. 

It  has  stimulated  inventions  and  improvements  to 
the  degree  that  some  of  the  great  staples  of  necessary 
use  have  been  permanently  cheapened  to  the  whole 
world. 

It  has  drawn  the  different  sections  of  the  country 
into  closer  business  relations,  and  has  interlaced  the 
great  trunk  lines  of  railroad  to  the  West  with  others 
running  Southward. 

It  has  brought  the  foreign  artizan  across  the  ocean, 
and  has  naturalized  his  craft  on  our  shores,  whereas 
Free  Trade  would  have  brought  his  work  only. 

It  has  made  us  as  regards  the  great  staples  inde- 
pendent of  all  other  countries  in  case  of  war,  while  it 
has  consolidated  the  national  unity  and  increased  the 


58  UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

national  strength  to  a  degree  that  makes  the  rest  of 
mankind  anxious  to  be  at  peace  with  us. 

It  has  created  a  sentiment  in  favor  of  this  poHcy  so 
powerful  that  no  political  party  ventures  to  oppose  it 
openly,  and  such  that  the  friends  of  Free  Trade  are 
hardly  heard  in  our  national  campaigns. 

Around  the  splendid  public  buildings  we  are  erect- 
ing in  Philadelphia,  there  stood  till  very  recently  a 
stiff  and  angular  structure  of  wood.  It  could  not  be 
said  to  add  to  the  beauty  of  the  marble  edifice  it  en- 
compassed. I  never  heard  any  one  admiring  it,  nor 
do  I  know  that  the  students  of  our  School  of  Design, 
which  looked  out  upon  it,  ever  sketched  it  as  a  thing 
of  beauty.  But  it  was  indispensable  to  the  erection 
of  the  building,  and  it  could  not  be  taken  down  till 
the  roof  was  on.  We  could  not  hire  winged  workmen 
to  carry  the  hod  and  lay  the  stone  work.  Like  that 
scaffolding  is  the  Tariff  around  the  edifice  of  our 
national  industries.  It  is  not  aesthetic.  It  adds 
nothing  to  the  beauty  of  the  edifice.  But  we  cannot 
do  without  it.  We  must  have  respect  to  the  neces- 
sities of  the  case  in  the  industrial  edifice  also. 

Three  times  in  our  history,  in  compliance  with  the 
demand  of  theory,  we  have  torn  down  that  national 
scaffolding  to  our  industrial  system.  Three  times  we 
have  had  to  put  it  up  again,  in  compliance  with  the 
demands  of  hard  fact.  Each  time  we  have  had  to 
resume  the  building  at  a  less  advanced  stage  than  that 
it  had  reached  before  we  gave  in  to  theory  in  making 
the  change.  This  time  the  American  people  seem  to 
me  to  have  made  up  their  minds  that  it  is  to  stay  up 
until  the  roof  is  on  ! 


III. 

THE  WORKINGMAN. 


Gentlemen  of  the  University  : — 

The  argument  I  am  about  to  present  to-night  is  in 
a  large  measure  independent  of  those  I  have  ah'eady 
presented  to  you.  It  is  that  the  protective  poHcy  is  a 
necessary  means  to  secure  to  the  American  workman 
such  a  compensation  for  his  toil,  as  will  enable  him  to 
live  on  that  level  of  comfort  which  our  American 
ideals  require  for  him. 

I  may  premise  that  the  democratic  ideal  of  equality 
on  which  we  pride  ourselves,  and  which  found  expres- 
sion in  Burns's  song,  "  A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that !  "  is 
of  very  recent  origin  and  of  slow  growth  even  in 
America.  In  Europe  it  may  be  said  to  have  begun  to 
have  made  headway  about  the  year  1848,  and  in 
America  about  two  decades  earlier.  But  there  lingers 
even  among  the  educated  classes  in  America  another 
ideal,  which  belongs  rather  to  the  Middle  Ages  than  to 
our  industrial  and  democratic  era.  The  way  in  which 
Trades'  Unions  and  their  strikes  are  still  spoken  of  in 
our  newspapers,  appears  to  me  to  imply  the  temper  in 
which  the  laws  to  fix  the  rate  of  wages  were  passed 
by  the  English  Parliament  five  hundred  years  ago.  It 
seems  to  be  assumed  that  the  workman  has  no  right 
to  refuse  to  work  where  the  terms  are  not  satisfactory 

59 


5o  UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

to  him,  and  that  his  association  with  his  fellows  to 
secure  fair  play  in  the  matter  of  hours  and  wages,  is 
an  unlawful  encroachment  upon  the  rights  of  other 
people.  Every  time  a  strike  fails  to  secure  the  result 
its  authors  had  in  view,  this  is  received  with  a  certain 
exultation  by  perhaps  a  majority  of  our  newspapers. 
The  ficfures  are  "•one  over  with  a  relish,  to  show  how 
gigantic  the  folly  which  forfeited  so  large  a  sum  in 
wages.  A  little  sympathy  with  the  workingir.an's 
position  might  bring  us  to  see,  perhaps,  that  the  strike 
was  morally  necessary  as  an  assertion  of  his  manhood 
against  what  he  regarded  as  an  injustice.  Of  course 
this  is  no  apology  for  the  acts  of  violence  which  have 
attended  some  great  strikes.  But  I  venture  the  sug- 
gestion that  a  more  sympathetic  tone  on  the  part  of  the 
public  toward  the  w^orkingman  would  tend  to  repress  the 
evil  tempers  which  break  out  in  violence.  Nothing  is  so 
likely  to  make  an  Ishmael  of  a  man,  as  in  the  discovery 
that  every  man's  voice,  if  not  his  hand,  is  against  him. 
Whatever  view  you  may  take  of  Protection  or  of 
Free  Trade,  I  hope  you  will  feel  the  responsibility  you 
have,  not  only  for  acts,  but  even  for  opinions,  which 
may  affect  the  position  and  character  of  the  most 
numerous  class  in  our  society.  By  doing  so,  you  may 
each  help  to  save  our  nation  from  the  growth  of  great 
gaps  and  refts  in  the  social  structure,  such  as  are  proving 
so  perilous  to  Europe.  You  must  not  think  of  such  a 
peril  as  a  thing  of  the  past ;  rather  it  is  a  thing  of  the 
present.  Even  in  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  less  than  it 
is  now.  The  old  feudal  baron  dealt  with  his  serfs  and 
dependents  face  to  face  ;  and  when  human  beings  meet 
in  that  way,  there  is  reached  some  modus  vh'endi,vjh\ch 
kee;.:is  their   relations  human   and   natural.       But  the 


THE   WORKINGMAN.  ^j 

changes  which  have  taken  place  in  the  last  century 
have  brought  it  about  that  we  are  served  by  people 
who  are  for  the  most  part  behind  stone  walls  to  us. 
Our  danger  is  that  it  will  be  out ''  of  sight,  out  of  mind," 
in  their  case,  and  they  will  come  to  feel  that  they  are 
nothings  and  nobodies  in  the  social  estimate.  Be 
assured  that  that  feeling  is  as  dangerous  to  society  as 
the  existence  of  solid  grievances  would  be. 

The  protectionist  policy  stands,  among  other  things, 
for  an  expression  of  the  national  interest  in  the  welfare 
of  the  working  classes.  It  is  a  declaration  that  the 
national  concern  is  not  for  the  wealthy  only,  but  for 
the  wage-earner  as  well. 

But  here  I  am  met  by  the  general  objection  that  if 
it  be  true  that  the  American  workman  is  better  off  than 
his  brother  in  Europe,  this  may  be  explained  without 
any  reference  to  the  Tariff.  It  is  said,  "  Our  circum- 
stances are  very  different  from  those  of  Western 
Europe.  We  have  an  abundance  of  unoccupied  land. 
Every  workman  has  his  choice  between  the  factory 
and  the  farm  which  he  may  obtain,  and  on  which  he 
will  be  his  own  master.  It  is  this  choice  which  makes 
wages  high  in  America."  I  presume  it  will  be  admitted 
that  this  advantage  existed  equally  in  the  period  which 
came  after  the  war  for  independence.  There  was  even 
more  unoccupied  land  then  than  now,  and  it  lay  much 
nearer  to  the  more  densely  settled  districts  of  the 
country.  The  artizan's  opportunities  of  becoming  a 
farmer  were  much  greater  than  they  are  to-day.  Yet 
his  condition  was  not  such  as  to  suggest  that  he  was 
a  very  highly  favored  workman.  He  was  paid  lower 
wages,  and  his  mode  of  life  was  humbler  and  harder. 
My  friend  and  colleague,  Prof  McMaster,  in  his  "  His- 


(52  UXIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

tory  of  the  American  People,"  describes  the  situation 
of  American  labor  after  the  return  of  peace : 

"  There  can  b^  no  doubt  that  wonderful  amelioration 
has  taken  place  since  that  day  in  the  condition  of  the 
poor.  Their  houses  were  meaner,  their  food  was 
coarser,  their  clothincj  was  of  commoner  stuff;  their 
wages  were,  despite  the  depreciation  that  has  gone  on 
in  the  value  of  money,  lower  by  one  half  than  at 
present.  A  man  who  performed  what  would  now  be 
called  unskilled  labor — who  sawed  wood,  who  dug 
ditches,  who  mended  roads,  who  mixed  mortar,  who 
carried  boards  to  the  carpenterand  bricks  to  the  mason 
or  helped  to  cut  hay  in  the  harvest-time — usually 
received  as  the  fruit  of  his  daily  toil  two  shillings. 
Sometimes,  when  laborers  were  few,  he  was  paid  more, 
and  became  the  envy  of  his  fellows  if  at  the  end  of  a 
week  he  took  home  to  his  family  fifteen  shillings,  a 
sum  now  greatly  exceeded  by  four  dollars.  Yet  all 
authorities  agree  that  in  1784  the  hire  of  workmen 
was  twice  as  great  as  in  1774. 

"  On  such  a  pittance  it  was  only  by  the  strictest 
economy  that  a  mechanic  kept  his  children  from 
starvation  and  himself  from  jail.  In  the  low  and 
dingy  rooms  which  he  called  his  home,  were  wanting 
many  articles  of  adornment  and  use,  now  to  be  found 
in  the  dwellings  of  the  poorest  of  his  class.  Sand 
sprinkled  on  the  floor  did  duty  as  a  carpet.  There  was 
no  glass  on  his  table,  there  was  no  china  in  his  cup- 
board, there  were  no  prints  on  his  wall.  .  .  . 
Over  a  fire  of  fragments  of  boxes  and  barrels,  which 
he  Ht  with  sparks  struck  from  a  flint,  or  with  live  coals 
brought  from  a  neighbor's  hearth,  his  wife  cooked  up 
a  rude  meal  and  served  it  in  pewter  dishes.     He  rarely 


THE   WORKINGMAN. 


63 


tasted  meat  as  often  as  once  a  week,  and  paid  for  it  a 
much  higher  price  than  his  posterity.  Everything, 
indeed,  which  ranked  as  a  staple  of  hfe,  was  very 
costly.  Corn  stood  at  three  shillings  the  bushel ; 
wheat  at  eight  and  sixpence  ;  an  assize  of  bread  was 
fourpence  ;  a  pound  of  salt  pork  was  tenpence.  Many 
other  commodities  now  to  be  seen  on  the  tables  of  the 
poor,  were  either  quite  unknown  or  far  beyond  the 
reach  of  his  scanty  means." 

In  1793  the  Schuylkill  and  Susquehanna  Canal 
Company  advertised  for  workmen,  offering  five  dollars 
a  month  for  the  winter  months,  and  six  dollars  for 
summer,  with  board  and  lodging.  The  next  year 
there  was  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Representatives, 
which  brought  out  the  fact  that  soldiers  got  but  $3  a 
month.  A  Vermont  member,  discussing  the  proposal 
to  raise  it  to  54,  said  that  in  his  state  men  were  hired 
for  ^18  a  year,  or  $4  a  month,  with  board  and  clothing. 
Mr.  Wadsworth  of  Pennsylvania  said,  "  In  the  states 
north  of  Pennsylvania,  the  wages  of  the  common 
laborer  are  not,  upon  the  whole,  superior  to  those  of 
the  common  soldier."  In  1795  skilled  laborers,  such 
as  type-setters  and  the  like,  earned  $\  a  day  in  Phila- 
delphia. A  French  traveller  tells  us  that  at  Albany 
laborers  could  be  had  in  great  abundance  for  three 
(York)  shillings  a  day.  At  Richmond  wages  ran  from 
IS.  6d.  to  IS.  lod.,  except  in  harvest,  when  from  2s.  4d. 
to  3s.  lod.  was  paid,  in  Virginian  currency  worth 
i^3-33  to  the  pound.  In  New  York  in  1794  hatters 
■could  earn  as  much  as  $2  a  day,  and  carpenters  lod. 
an  hour,  while  sailors  were  paid  $24  a  month.^ 

^  For  these  facts  I  am  indebted  to  the  kindness  of  Prof.  McMaster. 


64 


C W'll'EKS/'J-y  LECTURES. 


\\\  I'JC)'/  a  Rhode  Island  farmer  hired  good  farm- 
hands at  33  a  month  ;  and  $5  a  month  was  paid  to 
those  who  got  employment  for  the  eight  busy  months 
of  the  farmer's  year.  A  strong  boy  could  be  had  at 
that  time  in  Connecticut  for  $\  a  month  through  those 
months,  and  he  earned  it  by  working  from  day-break 
till  8  or  9  o'clock  at  night.  He  could  buy  a  coarse 
cotton  shirt  with  the  earnings  of  three  such  months. 
The  farmers  could  pay  no  better,  for  the  price  they  got 
for  produce  was  wretched.  Butter  sold  at  eight  cents 
a  pound,  and  when  it  rose  suddenly  to  ten  cents, 
several  farmers'  wives  and  daughters  went  out  of  their 
minds  with  the  excitement.  Women  picked  the  wool 
off  the  bushes  and  briars,  where  the  sheep  had  left  it, 
and  spun  and  knit  it  into  mittens  to  earn  $1  a  year  by 
this  toilsome  business.  They  hired  out  as  help  for 
twenty-five  cents  a  month  and  their  board.  By  a  day's 
hard  work  at  the  spinning-wheel  a  woman  and  girl 
together  could  earn  twelve  cents.  As  late  as  182 1 
the  best  farm-hands  could  be  had  for  twenty-five  cents 
a  day,  or  twice  as  much  in  mowing  time.' 

Matthew  Carey,  in  his  "  Letters  on  the  Charities  of 
Philadelphia"  (1829)  gives  a  painful  picture  of  the 
condition  of  the  working  classes  at  that  time.  Every 
avenue  to  employment  was  choked  with  applicants. 
Men  left  the  city  to  find  work  on  the  canals  at  from 
sixty  to  seventy-five  cents  a  day,  and  to  encounter  the 
malaria,  which  laid  them  low  in  numbers.  The  highest 
wages  paid  to  women  was  twenty-five  cents  a  day,  and 
even  the  women  who  made  clothes  for  the  arsenal 
were  paid  by  the    government   at   no    higher   rates. 

'Mr.  Thomas  Hazard  in  The  Providence  Journal. 


THE   WORKINGMAN. 


65 


When  the  ladies  of  the  city  begged  for  an  improve- 
ment on  this  rate,  the  Secretary  hesitated  lest  it 
should  di.arninge  the  relations  of  capital  and  labor 
throughout  the  city!  Poor  people  died  of  cold  and 
want  every  winter  in  the  city,  and  the  fact  seems  to 
have  made  an  impression  only  on  benevolently  dis- 
posed persons  like  Mr.  Carey. 

The  spirit  of  the  times  was  very  different  in  this 
respect  from  what  it  now  is.  It  was  aristocratic  rather 
than  genuinely  democratic.  The  American  Republic 
was  a  country  in  which  the  property-owning  class 
was  vastly  preponderant.  The  very  war  for  independ- 
ence grew  out  of  a  strike  of  the  tax-payers  against 
the  imposition  of  illegal  taxes.  Property  weighed 
more  than  manhood  in  public  opinion.  None  but  its 
owners  were  admitted  to  the  suffrage ;  and  in  Penn- 
sylvania there  was  a  controversy  whether  a  rich  man 
who  owned  merely  personal  property  should  be  allowed 
to  vote.  So  essentially  aristocratic  was  society,  that 
the  students  in  the  American  colleges  were  seated 
with  strict  reference  to  the  social  importance  of  their 
fathers.  The  wage-earning  class  was  small  and  not 
much  thought  of  In  such  a  community  the  maxims 
of  the  English  economists  found  a  congenial  soil,  and 
Matthew  Carey  tells  us  that  appeals  for  charitable  aid 
were  met  by  Malthusian  answers  or  profound  indiffer- 
ence. He  says  that  the  condition  of  the  workman 
in  America  was  not  essentially  better  than  in  Europe, 
and  he  quotes  Dr.  Ely  as  saying  that  the  slaves  of  the 
South  were  better  fed,  clothed  and  lodged  than  the 
laborers  in  the  North. 

The  existence  of  slavery  had  much  to  do  with  this. 
Even  the  Northern  states  were  slave  states  which  had 
5 


^5  L'XIVEHSITV  LECTURES. 

but  rccentl}'  abolished  chattel  slavery,  and  in  many  of 
them  there  had  been  large  numbers  of  white  slaves, 
called  "  reclcmptioners,"  who  had  been  working  out 
the  cost  of  their  passage  to  America.  The  taint  of 
slavery  still  lingered  in  the  social  atmosphere,  as  it 
still  does  in  the  South,  and  slavery  made  labor  a  dis- 
grace. 

Various  forces  co-operated  to  change  all  this.  One 
was  the  indirect  influence  of  the  levelling  doctrines  of 
the  French  Revolution,  with  which  one  political  party 
coquetted,  and  which  were  coming  to  be  believed. 
Another  was  the  immigration  of  large  bodies  of  Euro- 
peans, who  had  been  imbued  ^\ith  those  doctrines 
much  more  deeply,  and  who  began  to  insist  on  a  logi- 
cal application  of  the  principles  of  the  republican  sys- 
tem. These  immigrants  sought  the  free  states,  because 
they  hated  slavery  and  all  its  works.  They  demanded 
to  be  treated  on  the  principles  of  equality,  and  they 
administered  a  fatal  blow  to  the  remains  of  privilege 
in  America.  The  Irish  of  the  Protestant  faith,  who 
^'  were  out  in  '98,"  played  an  especially  important  part 
in  moulding  opinion  in  the  new  direction  in  the  Mid- 
dle and  Western  states. 

Another  cause  of  the  change  was  the  rise  of  the 
American  manufacturing  system  under  the  protection 
given  by  the  Tariffs  of  1824  and  1828.  When  the 
disasters  of  1837  fell  upon  the  country,  the  laboring 
class  had  attained  a  relative  importance  which  it  never 
had  had  before.  It  was  the  sufferings  of  the  work- 
ingmen  in  1837-40  that,  more  than  any  other  circum- 
stance, roused  the  people  to  expel  from  power  the  party 
which  was  held  responsible  for  the  depression  of  our 
industries,  and  which  refused  to  undertake  a  remcdv. 


THE  WORKINGMAN. 


67 


It  is  said  that  the  workingman  now  appears  in  the  argu- 
ments of  the  Protectionists  because  their  other  argu- 
ments had  broken  down ;  but  this  is  not  the  reason. 
There  is  not  an  argument  in  any  of  Matthew  Carey's 
multitudinous  pamphlets,  or  in  Frederick  List's 
"Outlines  of  American  Political  Economy"  (1827), 
or  in  Alexander  Hamilton's  Treasury  Report,  that  is 
not  used  by  Protectionists  as  freely  as  before  1840. 
The  reason  that  we  hear  of  protection  for  American 
labor  since  1840  as  not  before  that  date,  is  that  the 
workingman  was  rising  to  his  rightful  place  in  the 
American  state  through  the  decay  of  aristocratic  pre- 
judice, and  that  his  increase  in  numbers  made  his  injury 
from  the  Free  Trade  policy  a  much  more  serious  ele- 
ment in  the  situation. 

That  opinion  pla}'S  a  great  part  in  determining  the 
rate  of  wages,  is  admitted  by  the  English  economists. 
They  say  in  their  definition  of  the  "natural  and  neces- 
sary rate  of  wages,"  that  this  embraces  what  will  fur- 
nish the  single  workman  not  only  with  the  real  neces- 
saries of  life,  but  with  "  those  things  which  his  class 
regard. as  necessaries."  That  is,  the  public  opinion  of 
a  class,  and  that  the  weakest  although  the  most  numer- 
ous, suffices  to  add  the  price  of  beer  to  the  English 
workman's  wages  ;  and  if  the  temperance  people  were 
to  persuade  him  to  forswear  beer,  they  would  cause  a 
corresponding  reduction  of  his  wages.  What  is  thus 
ascribed  to  the  public  opinion  of  a  class,  is  far  truer 
of  the  general  public  opinion.  It  establishes  an  ideal 
of  what  the  condition  of  the  working  man  should  be, 
and  it  is  the  great  force  which  operates  to  lift  or  lower 
his  condition.  In  aristocratic  Europe  public  opinion 
has  depressed  him,  because  the  conviction  of  human 


68  UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

equality  which  came  in  with  the  French  Revokition  is 
still  the  propcrt}'  of  a  minority.  The  translation  of 
the  ideas  of  that  Revolution  into  economic  fact  has 
gone  forward  more  rapidly  in  America,  although  far 
from  complete.  We  are  giving  freer  scope  to  the 
economic  laws  which  tend  to  equalize  the  condition  of 
the  capitalist  and  the  wage-earner,  and  which  enable 
the  workman  to  command  the  services  of  capital  on 
terms  increasingly  favorable  to  himself  We  are  doing 
this  by  lifting  off  this  class  the  weight  of  social 
prejudices,  which  once  held  it  down  even  in  America. 
We  are  enabling  that  progress  from  what  is  worse  to 
better  in  the  case  of  labor  and  wages,  wdiich  is  the 
law  of  economic  development. 

"  But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  Tariff? " 
Much  every  way.  The  Tariff  is  the  arrangement  by 
which  we  give  the  law  its  chance.  It  is  not  the  origi- 
native force  in  raising  wages,  I  most  cordially  admit. 
But  it  is  the  means  of  isolating  the  field  of  our  na- 
tional industries  from  European  competitions,  to  an 
extent  which  enables  us  to  carry  our  ideals  into  prac- 
tice. Remove  the  Tariff,  and  you  throw  the  American 
workman  into  competition  with  the  underpaid  labor 
of  Europe,  and  you  force  his  employer  to  pay  him  at 
substantially  European  rates.  I  am  aware  that  the 
rate  could  not  fall  so  low  as  in  Europe,  and  need  not. 
Decades  of  high  wages  in  America  have  lifted  Ameri- 
can labor  in  most  departments  to  a  level  of  efficiency, 
which  would  give  it  some  permanent  advantages.  But 
this  higher  efficiency  is  not  enough  to  achieve  its 
independence  of  protection,  and  of  this  there  probably 
would  be  steady  decline  in  amount  and  effect,  under 
the  regime  of  low  wages.     Higher  efficiency  has  been 


THE   WORKINGMAX. 


69 


in  large  measure  due  to  the  better  spirit  infused  into 
the  workman  by  wages  that  enabled  him  to  feel  that 
he  could  live  like  a  human  being  and  educate  his 
children.  Any  decline  from  these, — and  Free  Traders 
generally  admit  that  under  Free  Tra<3e  there  would  be 
a  decline, — is  to  be  deprecated  on  account  of  its  social 
and  moral  as  well  as  its  economic  effects.  I  know  of 
nothing  more  touching  the  literature  of  labor  than  the 
protest  made  some  years  ago  against  a  reduction  of 
wages  in  the  coal-mining  districts  of  Pennsylvania. 
The  authors  of  the  protest  said  it  was  not  a  question 
of  comfort  merely.  It  was  the  social  status  of  their 
class  that  was  at  stake.  They  dreaded  going  back  to 
the  wages  of  the  years  before  the  war,  because  they 
feared  that  it  would  take  them  down  to  the  level  of 
their  life  in  general  at  that  time. 

The  Tariff  then  is  like  the  circle  the  magician  draws 
around  himself  before  he  can  work  his  wonders.  It 
bounds  and  circumscribes  for  the  sake  of  the  greater 
efficiency  thus  to  be  had.  In  considering  its  results 
in  this  connection  for  the  last  twenty-five  years  in  this 
country,  it  is  but  fair  to  bear  in  mind  under  what  spe- 
cial disadvantages  these  have  been  achieved.  The 
burdens,  losses  and  ravages  of  civil  war  began  this 
period.  The  pressure  of  a  national  debt  greater  than 
the  country  ever  had  known,  and  the  evils  of  a  depre- 
ciated and  fluctuating  currency,  prolonged  the  mis- 
chiefs of  the  war  into  the  years  of  peace.  The  rapid 
readjustments  of  industry  to  new  labor-saving  inven- 
tions have  gone  on  as  not  since  the  era  of  Watt  and 
Arkwright,  and  have  disturbed  the  labor  market  to 
an  extent  which  has  hardly  been  appreciated.  And 
whereas  formerly  this  disturbance  was  confined  to  man- 


yo 


IWIIEKSITY  LECTURES. 


ufacturcs,  since  1S55  it  has  affected  commerce  and 
agriculture  equally.  The  sailor  has  been  largely  dis- 
placed by  steam,  and  Mr.  IMcCormick's  reaper  has 
enabled  the  harvesting  of  far  greater  crops  at  a  far 
less  expense  for 'labor.  Although  patented  in  1835, 
it  had  to  wait  twenty  years  before  its  merits  were 
appreciated ;  and  it  did  not  attract  the  attention  of  th  ; 
American  farmer  until  its  great  success  at  the  French 
Exhibition  of  1855  showed  the  world  of  w'hat  it  was 
capable.  During  the  war  it  and  a  group  of  similar 
inventions  did  grand  service  in  preventing  the  drain 
of  men  to  the  front  from  reducing  our  productivity 
in  agriculture.  But  they  have  carried  this  difficulty 
of  adjusting  labor  to  new  conditions  into  our  farming. 
In  manufactures  the  progress  in  this  direction  has 
been  equally  embarrassing.  In  some  of  our  factories, 
the  working  force  has  been  reduced  to  one-half  of 
what  it  was,  without  any  reduction  in  the  output. 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  this  there  has  been  an  undeniable 
and  great  advance  in  the  condition  of  the  American 
laborer,  and  an  advance  whose  fruits  have  not  been 
lost  to  him  even  by  this  world-wide  depression  of  the 
last  ten  years.  It  is  true  that  until  last  summer  there 
was  a  disposition  to  call  this  in  question,  and  it  is  to 
your  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  that  we  are 
indebted  for  evidence  such  as  puts  the  matter  beyond 
doubt  or  dispute.  The  Report  made  by  that  Bureau 
last  summer  is  one  of  the  most  careful  pieces  of  work 
that  has  been  undertaken  by  modern  statists.  It 
shows  by  a  comparison  of  English  with  Massachusetts 
facts,  that  the  mass  of  labor  least  favorably  situated 
in  this  country  has  attained  a  position  which  English 
laborers  must  envy.      Until  this   Report  of  Colonel 


THE   WORKINGMAN. 


71 


Wright's  appeared,  it  was  said,  "  The  Tariff  takes 
from  the  working  man  as  much  as  it  gives  him.  It 
may  be  true  that  it  secures  him  the  doubtful  advantage 
of  higher  wages  ;  but  what  does  this  avail  him  if  at 
the  same  time  it  increases  the  cost  of  living  to  such  a 
degree  that  he  has  no  better  results  in  food,  clothing, 
housing  and  saving  than  his  English  competitor?" 
Now  Colonel  Wright's  Report  shows  that  wages  in 
Massachusetts  average  sixty-two  per  cent  higher  than 
in  England ;  that  living  is  but  seventeen  and  one- 
quarter  per  cent  higher ;  and  that  eleven  per  cent  of 
this  difference  is  due  to  the  higher  cost  of  house-rent. 
He  shows  that  the  actual  standard  of  living  is  fifty  per 
cent  higher  in  Massachusetts  than  in  England ;  and 
that  if  the  Massachusetts  workman  were  to  eat  as 
poor  food,  wear  as  poor  clothing,  and  live  in  as  mean 
a  house  as  the  English  workman,  he  could  save  three- 
eighths  of  his  income;  whereas  the  English  workman, 
living  at  that  mean  rate,  can  save  less  than  two  per 
cent.  He  shows  that  in  the  trades  carried  on  in  both 
Massachusetts  and  England,  the  English  maximum 
wages  are  below  ^20  for  men  and  about  $6  for  women ; 
while  the  Massachusetts  maximums  are  ^40  and  ;$20 
respectively.  One  Scotch  manufacturer  said  to  ex- 
Governor  Cheney  of  New  Hampshire,  when  facts  like 
these  were  pressed  upon  him, "  Our  people  don't  require 
so  much  as  yours,  and  they  are  not  accustomed  to  it." 
Colonel  Wright's  figures  were  anticipated  by  the 
Special  Report  of  Mr.  Edward  Young  on  "  Labor  in 
Europe  and  America"  (Washington,  1875);  and  by 
Mr.  Robert  P.  Porter's  valuable  letters  in  TJic  Trilntnc. 
They  may  be  said  to  run  parallel  to  the  figures  fur- 
nished by  the  Agricultural  Bureau,  which  show  that 


72 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 


wherever  the  Tariff  has  done  its  work  of  bringing  our 
industries  into  equiHbrium,  there  the  rate  of  wages  is 
higher  than  in  the  more  agricultural  parts  of  the 
country. 

To  another  Massachusetts  statist  wc  are  indebted 
for  a  proof  of  the  freedom  with  which  the  law  of  tend- 
ency towards  equality  is  working  in  America.  That 
law  was  enunciated  by  Mr.  Carey  very  early  in  his  ca- 
reer as  an  economist.  It  was  adopted  by  M.  Bastiat 
in  his  "  Harmonies  Economiques,"  without  any  credit 
given;  and  from  M.  Bastiat  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson  has 
taken  it,  apparently  without  any  knowledge  as  to  its 
real  authorship.  According  to  Mr.  Carey  the  capitalist 
receives  a  constantly  diminishing  share  of  the  joint 
earnings  of  labor  and  capital,  while  the  share  of  the 
laborer  is  constantly  increasing.  The  same  is  true  of 
the  distribution  of  the  harvest  between  landlord  and 
tenant.  The  landlord's  share  diminishes  relatively  to 
the  amount  of  the  harvest,  even  while  increasing  in 
absolute  amount.  And  so  important  is  this  law  in 
the  view  of  Mr.  Carey's  school,  that  they  would  test 
the  naturalness  of  any  system  by  the  degree  to  which 
this  tendency  to  equality  operates  under  that  system. 
Mr.  Atkinson,  in  his  Address  before  the  British  Asso- 
ciation at  Montreal  last  summer,  took  for  the  basis  of 
his  argument  the  cotton  industry  of  New  England, 
with  which  he  possesses  an  unrivalled  familiarity.  He 
showed,  comparing  1830  with  1884,  that  the  capital 
needed  to  start  a  spinning-mill  was  thirty-seven  per  cent 
less  than  in  1830;  that  the  number  of  spindles  was  two 
hundred  and  seventy-six  per  cent  greater  on  an  aver- 
age in  each  mill;  that  the  number  of  operatives  re- 
quired to  attend  to  a  thousand  spindles  was  sixty-four 


THE   VVORKINGMAN.  y-^ 

per  cent  less;  and  that  the  product  of  each  spindle 
was  three  hundred  and  fourteen  per  cent  greater.  But 
his  most  important  fact  was  that  while  competition  had 
kept  the  profits  down  to  a  lev^el  of  not  more  than  ten  per 
cent  on  the  capital  invested,  wages  had  risen.  Profits 
had  fallen  eighty-three  per  cent,  while  wages  had  risen 
seventy-seven  per  cent.  And  he  carries  the  comparison 
on  to  the  other  decades  as  compared  with  the  present. 
That  is  genuine  progress!  Prices  fall;  profits  fall; 
wages  rise.     Man  gains  and  tiling^  decline  in  value. 

Mr.  Atkinson  admits  that  American  wages  are 
higher  than  in  Europe,  and  gives  as  the  reason  that 
we  have  no  artificial  land  system  and  no  system  of 
caste  or  privilege.  You  know  how  heartily  I  agree 
with  him  on  this  point.  We  differ  only  as  to  his 
assumption  that  if  the  Tariff  were  out  of  the  way, 
American  wages  would  not  be  injuriously  affected  by 
the  competition  of  countries  in  which  caste  and  privi- 
lege are  still  built  into  the  social  order,  and  where  the 
land  system  is  one  of  the  many  expressions  of  this 
fact.  If  you  join  two  tanks  by  an  open  pipe,  the  water 
in  the  two  will  find  a  common  level.  If  you  throw 
open  the  markets  of  America  to  English  competition, 
then  wages  must  come  down  to  something  like  the 
English  level.  And  this  some  Free  Traders  are  candid 
enough  and  consistent  enough  to  admit.  It  is  a  neces- 
sary corollary  to  the  principle  of  the  efficacy  of  com- 
petition in  bringing  things  to  a  level. 

Is  this  law  of  tendency  to  equality  at  work  in  Eng- 
land as  freely  as  in  America?  Mr.  Robert  Gififen 
thinks  he  has  shown  that  while  the  income  of  the 
capitalist  class  has  increased  one  hundred  and  ten  per 
cent  since   1843,  that  of  the  working  classes  has  in- 


y^  UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

creased  one  hundred  and  thirty  per  cent.  But  the  part 
of  this  income  which  is  covered  by  the  exact  figures 
of  the  income-tax  returns  gives  a  different  result.  It 
shows  an  increase  of  but  one  hundred  per  cent, 
being  ten  per  cent  behind  the  gains  of  the  capitahst 
class.  The  other  part  of  his  statement  is  based  upon 
conjecture.  And  when  we  recall  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Mulhall  finds  the  average  wealth  of  the  English  sub- 
ject to  amount  to  $i  lOO,  while  that  of  the  American 
citizen  is  but  i^pSo,  we  see  reason  to  doubt  Mr.  Giffen's 
estimates.  Of  this  wealth  a  very  large  part  has  beea 
accumulated  in  the  last  forty  years,  and  yet  English 
wages  fall  far  below  American.  That  can  only  mean 
that  there  has  been  no  such  operation  of  the  tendency 
to  equality  in  England  as  in  this  country.  Mr.  W.. 
Cunningham,  in  his  admirable  book,  "  The  Growth  of 
English  Industry  and  Commerce"  (Cambridge,  1882),, 
denies  the  existence  even  of  such  a  tendency.  He 
says,  "Under  the  regime  of  free  competition,  which 
has  been  dominant  for  more  than  a  century  and  a 
half,  .  .  .  there  is  a  constant  tendency  for  the 
position  of  laborers  to  be  depressed  relatively  to  that 
of  capitalists."  He  admits  that  the  wealth  of  the  nation 
has  adv^anced  enormously,  but  insists  that  that  of  the 
laborer  has  not  advanced  so  fast  as  the  whole  wealth 
of  the  country,  or  that  of  other  classes.  And  Mr. 
Thorold  Rogers  in  his  "  Six  Centuries  of  Work  and 
Wages,"  maintains  that  the  condition  of  the  working- 
man  on  English  land  was  better  in  the  Middle  Ages 
than  it  is  to-day.  Of  Mr.  Giffen's  Essay,  he  says,  "I 
have  read  nothing  lately,  the  results  of  which  are  more 
open  to  debate."  Mr.  Giffen's  materials  he  pronounces 
"of very  unequal  value," 


THE   WORKINGMAN. 


75 


Even  in  considering  such  progress  as  has  been 
made  in  England,  it  is  not  fair  to  leave  America  out  of 
account.  Forty  years  ago  Mr.  Cobden  advised  the 
English  workman  to  save  the  price  of  a  passage  to 
America,  and  with  this  in  his  pocket  to  negotiate  with 
his  employer  for  such  wages  as  he  thought  it  fair  to 
ask.  If  that  advice  has  not  been  followed  to  the 
letter,  its  spirit  has  been  acted  on.  The  knowledge 
that  America  is  so  accessible,  that  it  is  a  country 
where  labor  is  honored,  and  that  it  furnishes  a  growing 
market  for  industrial  skill,  has  had  much  to  do  with 
the  terms  on  which  English  labor  has  been  hired  since 
the  time  we  began  to  lift  ourselves  out  of  industrial 
dependence  upon  England.  English  masters  remem- 
ber it,  and  feel  that  their  problem  with  their  "  hands  " 
would  be  easier  if  we  were  not  in  their  way. 

"  But  there  you  have  reached  the  rediictio  ad  absur- 
dum  of  Protection.  You  profess  to  protect  labor,  and 
yet  you  permit  its  free  importation  in  any  quantity. 
To  be  consistent  you  should  put  a  protective  duty  on 
such  importations."  Nay ;  we  should  do  better  than 
that.  We  should  put  an  absolute  prohibition  upon  the 
importation  of  labor.  We  have  done  so  with  the  im- 
ported coolie  labor  of  China,  and  I  hope  to  see  a 
similar  prohibition  on  all  such  importations,  whether 
they  are  from  China,  or  Italy  or  Hungary  or  Ireland.' 
The  coolie,  who  comes  here  without  his  family,  who 
strikes  no  root  in  our  soil,  who  is  a  virtual  slave  until 
he  has  earned  as  much  as  pays  his  passage-money, 
and  who  only  wants  to  sa\x'  a  pittance  to  spend  at 
home, — him  we  do  not  want  on  any  terms.     He  is  the 

^  This  was  done  by  the  Congress  then  in  session. 


76 


I  W/rERS/TY  LECTURES. 


imported  laborer.  But  the  free  immigrant,  who  comes 
to  cast  in  his  lot  and  that  of  his  posterity  with  the 
American  people,  to  accept  their  standard  of  living, 
and  to  make  a  home  here  for  the  wife  and  children  he 
brings, — him  we  do  want  always.  It  is  true  he  is  a 
competitor  in  one  particular  line  of  production  with 
the  workmen  who  are  here  already;  but  true  also  that 
he  is  a  fresh  customer  for  those  in  every  other  line  of 
production  that  ministers  to  general  wants,  and  espe- 
cially for  our  producers  of  food. 

Mr.  Rathbone  of  Liverpool  has  made  an  ingenious 
criticism  on  our  American  wages  system,  which  de- 
serves some  attention.  He  admits  that  American 
wages  are  higher  than  English,  but  he  claims  for  the 
latter  that  they  are  steadier  and  therefore  on  the  whole 
more  beneficial.  He  finds  in  the  comparative  unsteadi- 
ness of  American  wages  a  "  demoralizing  "  influence, 
which  he  says  must  work  against  the  highest  interests 
of  those  who  receive  them.  This  way  of  reasoning  at 
once  recalls  Mr.  Carlylc's  "  Ilias  Americana  in  Nuce." 
According  to  Mr.  Carlyle  and  other  apologists  for 
human  bondage,  the  great  merit  of  slavery  was  in  the 
steadiness  of  condition  it  secured  to  the  laborer,  and 
the  security  it  gave  him  against  such  shifts  from  better 
to  worse  as  befell  the  free  laborer.  And  there  is  no 
doubt  that  slavery  did  all  this,  which  Mr.  Rathbone 
thinks  of  such  importance;  and  no  doubt  also  that 
when  a  nation's  work-people  have  been  brought  down 
to  what  the  English  economists  define  as  "the  natural 
rate  of  wages,"  there  is  for  them  also  a  stability  not 
unlike  that  of  the  slave.  When  workmen  have  been 
made  to  live  upon  such  wages  as  secure  them  the  real 
and  the  su])posed  necessaries  of  existence,  you  cannot 


THE   IVOR  KINGMAN. 


77 


bring  them  much  lower  than  that.  They  may  as  well 
starve  in  idleness  as  starve  working,  so  they  are  insured 
from  depression  of  wages  below  that  standard.  But  it 
seems  that  the  English  workmen  are  not  content  with 
that  rate,  and  by  their  Trades'  Unions  have  secured  a 
higher  rate,  in  spite  of  the  demonstrations  of  the  ortho- 
dox economists  that  a  higher  rate  is  impossible.  And 
as  the  steadiness  of  the  old  rate  has  disappeared,  the 
"  demoralization"  mourned  by  Mr.  Rathbone  h.as  set 
in.  An  English  rector  quotes  the  working  men's 
wives  as  saying  that  an  increase  in  wages  means  little 
more  than  a  larger  consumption  of  strong  drink,  and 
a  more  liberal  beating  of  wives. 

In  America  it  has  meant  something  very  different 
from  that.  In  this  State  the  deposits  in  the  savings' 
banks  have  increased  fivefold  since  1861,  and  the 
number  of  depositors  has  nearly  doubled.  In  the 
savings'  banks  of  New  England  there  are  deposits  ex- 
ceeding by  forty  millions  all  the  deposits  in  the  Eng- 
lish savings'  banks ;  and  in  New  York  the  deposits  are 
fully  up  to  the  English  aggregate.  This  is  not  due  to 
the  greater  facilities  given  for  such  deposits  in  Amer- 
ica. On  the  contrary  we  have  nothing  so  admirable 
as  the  English  Post-Office  Savings'  Banks,  and  in 
England  every  pains  has  been  taken  to  make  the  habit 
of  saving  general  and  popular.  It  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  English  workman  has  but  two  per  cent  mar- 
gin for  saving,  while  the  American  has  a  very  con- 
siderable margin,  and  makes  this  "demoralizing"  use 
of  it.  We  do  not  use  savings'  banks  to  any  great  ex- 
tent in  Philadelphia,  because  we  think  we  have  some- 
thing much  better  in  our  building  associations.  These 
are  managed  by  the  investors  themselves,  and  they  use 


78 


i'X/rERS/TV  LFXTURES. 


the  savings  of  our  workingmen  to  secure  homes  for 
their  own  class.  They  have  added  twenty  per  cent 
of  the  value  of  all  the  real  estate  in  our  city,  and  have 
coxered  a  large  area  with  small  houses.  I  know  of  no 
finer  sight  in  America  than  the  one  I  had  from  the 
third  storx"  of  a  house  in  which  I  used  to  live  in  the 
South-western  part  of  the  city,  where  I  overlooked 
nearl}-  a  square  mile  of  such  houses, — all  the  homes 
of  those  who  were  living  by  their  toil  in  workshop  and 
store,  and  who  there  enjoyed  a  family  life  in  that  pri- 
vacy which  is  the  first  condition  of  refinement  and 
social  elevation.  I  see  nothing  "  demoralizing"  in  such 
results  as  these. 

It  is  precisely  to  the  moral  results  of  higher  wages 
that  we  appeal  as  the  real  vindication  of  our  policy 
and  our  ideals.  Higher  wages  have  made  the  Ameri- 
can workman  more  effective  as  a  workman.  .  They  have 
put  a  readier  spirit  into  him.  They  have  made  him 
willing  to  turn  his  hand  to  anything  there  is  to  be 
done  in  workshop  or  factory,  while  the  English  work- 
man is  bound  by  rules  which  caricature  the  caste 
restrictions  of  aristocratic  societv'.  They  have  given 
him  a  promptness  of  attention,  which  is  of  incalculable 
value  to  his  employer.  At  the  Centennial  an  English 
capitalist  bought  a  machine  which  works  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  a  stamp.  It  was  worked  by  an  American 
workman,  who  never  lost  a  stroke.  When  it  went  to 
England  it  was  found  that  an  English  workman,  with 
a  boy  to  help  him  in  getting  his  work  ready,  lost  from 
twent)'  to  thirty  strokes  out  of  every  hundred. 
Higher  wages  have  given  the  American  workman  a 
genuine  interest  in  the  success  of  the  business  in 
which  he  is  at  work.     An  employer  once  wrote  to  me 


THE   WORKIKGMAN.  jg 

tliat  he  found  that  one  of  his  men  had  been  lying 
awake  at  night  trying  to  devise  an  improvement  which 
would  overcome  a  defect  in  the  machine  he  was  using, 
and  that  without  any  expectation  of  reward  for  so 
doing.  In  many  of  our  workshops  there  is  a  standing 
offer  of  remuneration  for  the  invention  of  such  im- 
provements ;  and  the  remarkable  achievements  of  our 
inventors  are  but  the  summit-peaks  of  the  general 
high  level  of  intelligence  in  cur  workmen.  Mr. 
Tiffany's  establishment  has  furnished  as  abundant 
opportunities  for  testing  the  quality  of  American  and 
foreign  labor  as  can  be  found  anywhere ;  and  his  fore- 
man declares  that  the  American  workman  has  no 
superior  in  the  world. 

Higher  wages  have  made  possible  to  the  great  body 
of  our  workmen  a  very  different  kind  of  home  life  from 
that  which  is  usual  in  Europe.  It  is  not  merely  that 
their  homes  are  much  superior  as  buildings,  but  that 
so  large  a  proportion  of  their  wives  are  at  home 
and  their  children  at  school,  where  in  Europe  they 
would  all  be  in  the  factory  or  even  in  the  workshop. 
Take  the  case  of  nail-making.  In  the  British  Islands 
nearly  all  the  nails  are  made  by  hand  ;  it  is  only  a  few 
years  since  nail-making  machinery  from  America  was 
set  up  for  the  first  time  in  Belfast,  and  was,  I  believe, 
the  first  of  the  kind  known  in  the  United  Kingdom. 
Throughout  the  Black  Country  in  central  Iuigland,}-ou 
will  see  women  and  girls  cased  in  leather  aprons  work- 
ing at  the  nail-forges.  So  with  the  hoop-iron  ties  used 
in  the  fastening  of  cotton-bales.  In  1883  there  was  a 
great  and  a  successful  outcr)^  against  the  duty  on  these 
ties,  which  are  made  in  America  by  men  exclusively. 
In  England  they  are  made  by  women  and  girls.    Even 


^so  u.yirEA's/Tv  lectures. 

where  women  and  girls  are  employed  in  our  manu- 
factures, it  is  in  less  laborious  and  unwomanly  work 
than  is  required  of  them  in  luigland,  Belgium  and 
Germany. 

"  All  this,"  we  are  told,  "  only  illustrates  the  self- 
ishness of  the  protective  system.  It  means  a  refusal 
of  the  American  people  to  give  any  employment  to 
the  toiling  millions  of  Europe.  It  means  that  we  are 
to  be  content  to  have  them  live  in  their  hunger  and 
nakedness,  and  not  to  minister  to  their  wants."  I 
have  already  given  you  my  reasons  for  believing  that 
we  can  render  no  higher  service  to  the  working  classes 
of  Europe,  than  to  maintain  our  own  workmen  at  the 
highest  possible  level  of  comfort.  It  is  that  which  has 
furnished  them  with  the  fulcrum  for  the  raising  of 
their  wages,  so  far  as  this  has  been  effected  already. 
It  is  that  which  is  now  giving  them  their  best  help  in 
carrying  on  that  peaceful,  social  revolution,  by  which 
the  aristocratic  ideals  are  driven  out  of  politics  and 
industry  alike,  and  a  truer  conception  of  the  worth  of 
man  and  workman  is  taking  their  place.  Whatever 
depresses  the  conditicm  of  labor  in  America,  gives  new 
strength  to  the  friends  of  restriction  and  privilege  in 
Europe.  Whatever  deviates  that  condition,  makes  the 
advance  of  the  social  forces  of  reform  and  equality 
more  rapid.  And  as  this  is  the  effect  of  our  Tariff,  no 
other  class  has  a  greater  interest  in  its  maintenance 
than  the  working  people  of  Europe. 

But  even  if  it  were  not  so,  the  simple  fact  that  it  is 
best  for  American  labor  to  impose  restrictions  on  the 
competition  with  Europe,  would  be  reason  enough. 
Our  first  tluty  in  this  matter  is  to  our  neighbors  at 
home.     That  word  "  nei</hbor  "  seems  to  mc  to  be  the 


THE   IVOR  KING  MAN.  gj 

foundation  of  social  ethics.  It  is  .a  grand  Bible  word, 
to  which  we  cannot  give  too  much  weight.  It  means 
that  in  the  divine  order  of  human  hfe,  I  am  not  related 
equally  and  indifferently  to  all  mankind.  A  few  stand 
very  close  to  me,  and  my  duty  to  them  comes  first. 
To  a  much  larger  body  I  am  bound  by  varying  de- 
grees of  social  nearness,  or  neighborhood ; — to  the 
community,  to  the  state,  to  the  nation.  My  neighbor 
is  the  man  whom  this  divine  order  of  life  brings  into 
my  lifj,  and  whose  claim  upon  me  grows  out  of  this 
nearness  to  me.  It  is  not  the  man  of  my  sect,  or  even 
the  man  of  the  same  nativity  with  me,  or  of  my  race. 
It  is  the  man  who  comes  into  my  life  who  has  the 
neighbor's  claim.  And  if  a  collision  were  possible  be- 
tween the  interest  of  workmen  in  Europe  and  of  those 
in  our  own  country,  I  for  one  would  do  what  I  thought 
best  for  the  latter,  and  would  feel  that  I  had  discharged 
the  highest  responsibility  in  discharging  the  nearest. 
In  so  doing  I  should  be  no  more  selfish,  than  in  heed- 
ing the  Apostle's  words  :  "  If  any  provide  not  for  his 
own,  and  specially  for  those  of  his  own  house,  he  hath 
denied  the  faith,  and  is  worse  than  an  infidel." 

Nor  is  this  code  of  ethics  negative.  You  may  turn 
maxims  of  this  kind  into  mere  negations, — into  mere 
denials  of  your  obligations  to  others  than  those  whom 
you  know,  as  some  people  urge  their  dut}'  to  "  the 
heathen  at  home  "  as  a  reason  for  giving  nothing  to  for- 
eign missions.  But  if  you  take  it  the  other  wa\',  and  look 
at  it  as  a  positive  law,  you  will  find  it  a  most  exacting 
law.  It  will  help  to  bring  you  into  right  relations 
with  th-e  imperfect  specimens  of  humanity^  who  rub 
elbows  with  you,  with  the  brother  whom  you  have 
seen  and  whose  faults  you  cannot  help  seeing  also. 
6 


82  UNI  VERS/ TV  LEC'JURES. 

Above  all  it  will  help  you  to  recognize  the  kinship  of 
humanity  as  binding  you  to  all  who  render  you  indus- 
trial service,  however  humble  ;  and  it  will  keep  you  from 
thinking  of  them  as  merely  "hands,"  or  tools  for  your 
service. 


IV. 
ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS. 


'Gentlemen  of  the  University  : — 

I  SHOULD  be  sorry  to  ha\e  you  suppose  that  my  first 
three  lectures  covered  the  whole  ground  of  the  argu- 
ment for  Protective  Tariffs.  Some  important  branches 
of  that  argument,  such  as  the  necessity  of  Protection 
on  the  part  of  a  less  wealthy  country  for  the  retention 
of  its  supply  of  gold  coin,  I  have  not  been  able  to 
"touch  upon  at  all.  And  instead  of  proceeding  to  deal 
with  these,  I  feel  constrained  to  occupy  this  last  lecture 
with  an  answer  to  some  of  the  objections  to  this  policy 
•of  Protection,  you  are  likely  to  hear. 

Permit  me  again  to  remind  you  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  ideal  legislation.  Every  law  has  in  it  an  ele- 
ment of  compromise ;  it  sacrifices  something  for  the 
sake  of  a  greater  gain.  It  is  necessary  to  lay  great 
stress  on  this  point;  for  if  we  forget  it,  we  lay  ourselves 
open  to  those  arts  by  which  the  doctrinaire  seeks  to 
discredit  the  best  and  the  most  valuable  methods  of 
social  procedure.  It  is  only  necessary  for  him  to  fix 
attention  upon  the  lesser  good  which  the  law  .sacrifices, 
to  treat  this  as  though  it  were  the  main  thing  to  be 
thought  of,  and  by  exaggeration  of  its  value  to  bring 
it  to  fill  a  place  in  men's  thoughts  to  which  it  has  no 
claim.     Such  men  are   they  who  provoked  Burke'^ 

83 


84  UNI  J  'ERSIT ) '  LECTURES. 

saying  that  "a  penny  held  close  to  the  eye,  comes  to 
look  bigger  than  a  sovereign  in  the  distance."  There 
never  was  a  marriage  law,  for  instance,  which  did  not 
work  hardship  by  either  its  looseness  or  its  severity. 
And  there  never  was  a  Tariff  law,  to  which  human 
ingenuity  could  not  find  or  devise  some  plausible  ob- 
jections. The  best  is  but  a  rough  and  ready  way  of 
accomplishing  certain  economic  results,  and  must  be 
judged  broadly  by  its  effects. 

Furthermore  the  Tariff  is  no  cure-all.  There  are 
no  panaceas  in  medicine,  and  it  is  only  quacks  who  say 
there  are.  There  are  some  well  ascertained  specifics  for 
certain  diseases;  and  the  Tariff  is  like  them.  It  is  the 
specific  for  the  evil  of  a  defective  home  production  in 
some  line  of  industry  which  is  essential  to  the  national 
welfare.  Its  object  is  to  effect  such  an  equalization  of 
Conditions,  as  will  induce  and  enable  the  capitalist  at 
home  to  put  his  capital  into  the  neglected  and  djfect- 
ive  industry,  and  bring  home  production  up  to  the  level 
of  national  demand.  It  seeks  in  this  way  the  diversi- 
fication of  our  industry,  and  if  it  has  accomplished 
that  it  has  done  its  work,  and  is  not  to  be  censured  for 
not  making  men  wise,  virtuous  or  anything  else  that 
is  not  within  its  proper  scope.  And  yet  for  these 
things  it  is  censured. 

It  is  said,  for  instance,  "The  Tariff  is  the  instrument 
of  dishonesty.  It  enables  excessive  charges  in  the 
years  after  its  establishment,  in  that  it  gives  a  kind  of 
monopoly,  until  the  amount  of  home  capital  invested 
in  the  industry  has  become  sufficient  to  cause  a  vigor- 
ous competition  for  the  home  market."  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible that  there  have  been  excessive  charges  made  and 
excessive  profits  reaped  under  such  circumstances.     If 


ANSWERS  rO   OBJECTIONS.  g- 

it  be  so,  the  remedy  is  both  near  at  hand  and  certain 
in  its  operation.  But  certainly  no  censor  of  our  busi- 
ness morals  would  think  of  selecting  our  protected 
manufactures  as  the  most  glaring  illustration  of  want 
of  principle  and  overcharges  in  their  dealings  with  the 
public.  He  would  speak  of  the  great  "  Corners"  in 
oil,  pork  and  wheat,  and  of  the  speculations  in  railroad 
securities,  as  the  darkest  stains  on  our  commercial 
morality.  Dr.  Lyon  Playfair,  who  was  in  this  country 
some  years  ago,  wrote  in  Macmillan  s  Magasine  on 
his  return  an  expression  of  his  admiration  for  the 
honesty  of  the  work  done  by  the  manufacturers  of 
New  England,  and  said  he  recognized  a  survival  of 
the  old  Puritan  spirit  in  this. 

It  is  said  with  equal  unreason,  that  "the  Tariff 
tempts  men  to  undertake  industries  under  conditions, 
in  whicn  permanent  success  is  as  good  as  impossible." 
It  maybe  quite  true  that  protected  manufactures  ha\-e 
been  begun  under  such  conditions.  But  so  have  un- 
protected manufactures.  "Against  stupidity  even  the 
gods  are  powerless."  The  shift  of  English  cotton 
spinning  from  Manchester  to  Oldham  shows  that  even 
the  Manchester  school  may  put  an  indu.stry  in  the 
wrong  place.  And  when  an  American  tries  to  spin 
cotton  yarn  in  central  New  York,  away  from  the  sea 
air  which  plays  so  prominent  a  part  in  the  industry, 
we  may  expect  that  he  will  go  to  school  to  experience 
for  a  sharp  lesson.  But  manufacturers  have  no  mo- 
nopoly of  stupidity.  It  is  seen  among  commercial 
men  in  at  least  equal  measure.  On  the  revolt  of  the 
Spanish  colonies,  English  exporting  firms  .sent  invoices 
of  skates  to  cities  where  ice  and  snow  had  never  been 
seen,  and    enough   Epsom    Salts  to    some    places  to 


86  UNI  J  EH  SIT  V  LEC  TURES. 

physic  the  whole  population  once  a  day  for  several- 
years. 

The  great  objection  to  the  Tariff,  and  one  into  which 
so  many  others  resolve  themselves,  is  to  its  effects  upon 
prices  of  protected  commodities.  It  is  charged  that  "  it 
operates  to  make  things  dear  and  scarce,  and  therefore 
it  oppresses  the  country  upon  which  it  is  imposed." 

I  answer,  in  the  first  place,  that  neither  scarcity  nor 
dearness  is  the  object  of  the  Tariff,  but  the  reverse. 
Its  object  is  to  cause  an  increased  production  of  the 
articles  it  affects.  If  for  instance  we  had  had  no  duty 
on  iron,  then  the  production  of  iron  for  the  world's 
use  would  have  been  much  smaller  than  it  now  is. 
And  by  consequence  it  would  have  been  dearer  to  the 
world  than  it  is.  Free  Traders  vindicate  England  for 
leaving  herself  dependent  upon  other  countries  for  her 
supply  of  wheat,  by  the  argument  that  she  is  the  more 
secure  from  scarcity  and  famine,  since  she  draws  her 
food  supply  from  a  larger  area.  Whatever  then  en- 
larges,the  area  from  which  we  derive  our  supply  of 
the  manufactures  we  need  must  tend  in  the  same  way 
to  cheapness  and  plenty. 

Sometimes  a  duty  on  an  article  not  largely  made  at 
home  before  its  imposition  causes  no  increase  in  the 
price,  either  soon  or  late.  The  reason  for  this  is  that 
the  profits  exacted  by  the  middleman  are  often  exces- 
sive, and  the  Tariff  has  the  effect  of  forcing  him  to  be 
content  with  less.  '  Mr.  Thomas  Hughes,  when  he 
was  last  in  Philadelphia,  told  us  that  our  Tariff  had 
effected  such  an  increase  of  prices,  that  what  had  cost 
him  but  a  shilling  at  home,  he  was  asked  a  dollar  for 
in  America.  Let  us  look  at  that  statement  closely  :. 
The  duties  in  our  Tariff  did  not  amount  to  so  much  as- 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS.  87 

sixty-six  per  cent  ad  valorem,  or  8  pence  on  the  Eng- 
lish shilling.  Deducting  is  8d  from  the  4s  which 
make  a  dollar,  there  is  left  2s  4d.  What  became  of 
that  2s  4d  which  was  neither  part  of  the  English  price, 
not  part  of  the  American  duty  ?  I  will  be  told  that  Mr. 
Hughes  put  his  case  too  strongly.  I  do  not  believe 
that  he  did.  He  came  to  this  country  with  a  preference, 
as  was  natural,  for  certain  articles  of  English  make  and 
use,  and  in  which  there  is  little  or  no  American  com- 
petition. He  had  to  pay  accordingly.  My  own  family 
had  just  the  same  experience,  when  we  had  not  yet 
been  sufficiently  Americanized  to  make  our  purchases 
on  American  lines.  We  found  the  shilling  was  the 
equivalent  of  the  dollar.  And  that  was  in  1857,  under 
the  nearest  approach  to  Free  Trade  this  country  ever 
had  or  is  likely  to  have. 

In  such  circumstances  the  trader  finds  it  necessary 
to  accept  a  reduction  of  his  profits  to  hold  the  market. 
Or  he  finds  the  law  has  cut  so  heavily  into  them,  that 
it  is  better  worth  his  while  to  sell  the  home-made  article 
at  the  old  price,  than  to  try  to  keep  the  market  for  his 
foreign  correspondents.  This  is  the  change  which  has 
been  going  on  in  New  York  for  the  last  fifteen  years. 
Firms  which  once  dealt  only  in  imported  textiles  or 
hardwares  and  were  zealous  for  Free  Trade,  are  now 
selling  American  goods  alone,  and  are  either  friendly  to 
the  protective  policy  or  indifferent.  They  know  from 
their  own  list  of  prices  that  the  country  is  served  as 
cheaply  as  before  with  the  goods  they  deal  in.  The 
lists  of  prices  furnished  in  1869  to  Mr.  David  A.  Wells 
by  the  principal  New  York  dealers  in  textiles  showed 
that  prices  were  no  higher  than  in  1859  under  Free. 
Trade.     At  present  they  are  much  lower. 


88  UNiJ'ERsn^y  lectl-res. 

Sometimes  a  protective  duty  keeps  prices  in  favor 
of  the  consumer  simply  b)-  enabling  the  home  pro- 
ducer to  extend  his  operations  to  a  much  <jreater  scale. 
As  in  publishing  a  newspaper,  eveiy  increase  in  the 
circulation  enables  the  publisher  to  give  a  better  paper 
at  a  lower  price,  so,  but  in  a  less  degree,  is  it  with 
manufactures.  There  are  certain  elements  of  cost 
which  are  equal  with  a  great  out-put  and  a  small  one. 
Every  extension  of  the  business  makes  the  costs  from 
these  outlays  smaller  in  proportion  to  the  whole  quan- 
tity. Thus  the  duties  on  cotton  goods  laid  by  the 
Tariff  of  1842,  instead  of  making  those  goods  dearer, 
actually  reduced  the  price. 

Even  where  a  protective  duty  does  cause  an  in- 
crease in  prices,  this  increase  is  very  seldom  permanent. 
If  the  profits  in  any  line  of  production  be  above  the 
average,  capital  will  usually  be  attracted  into  that  busi- 
ness, until  the  home  competition  pulls  down  prices  and 
profits  to  the  normal  level.  This  levelling  does  not 
proceed  with  the  rapidity  and  uniformity  which  the 
older  economists  took  for  granted.  But  it  does  oper- 
ate sooner  or  later,  and  the  Protective  policy  put  no 
restraint  on  its  operation.  English  Free  Traders  insist 
on  this  fact  as  a  reason  against  Protection.  They  say, 
"Your  tariff  aimed  at  an  increase  of  prices;  but  as  it 
put  no  limit  to  home  competition,  that  pulled  prices 
and  profits  in  the  protected  industries  down  to  the 
usual  level,  and  thus  defeated  the  object  of  the  Tariff" 
We  reply,  "  That  was  the  very  intention  of  our  Tariff 
laws,  to  bring  prices  and  profits  in  the  protected  lines 
of  production  to  the  normal  level."  American  Free 
Traders  seem  to  differ  from  their  English  brethren,  by 
denying  that  this  will  be  the  result.      They  seem  to 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS.  89 

assert  that  the  amount  of  the  protective  duty  will  be 
added  to  the  price,  in  spite  of  the  home  competition.  In 
this  they  seem  to  me  to  abandon  that  faith  in  the  efficacy 
of  competition  as  an  equalizing  force,  which  is  the 
foundation  of  Adam  Smith's  teaching.  They  "  read 
themselves  out  of"  his  school,  by  taking  this  position. 
There  are  more  serious  objections  to  this  notion 
that  the  protected  manufacturer  can  add  the  duty  to 
price,  than  that  it  is  in  collision  with  Free  Trade 
orthodoxy.  It  is  in  conflict  with  common  sense.  To 
use  a  favorite  illustration  of  Horace  Greeley's,  would 
■a  thousand  dollar  duty  on  a  ton  of  imported  iron,  put 
the  price  of  iron  up  to  a  thousand  dollars  a  ton?  Does 
the  duty  of  fifteen  cents  a  bushel  upon  imported  pota- 
toes enable  the  farmers  to  extract  fifteen  million  dol- 
lars a  year  out  of  the  consumers,  which  we  would  not 
have  to  pay  if  there  were  no  such  duty.  Suppose  that 
our  Tariff  were  prohibitory  upon  every  article  on  which 
it  imposes  a  protective  duty ; — would  there  then  be  no 
limit  to  the  price  at  which  those  articles  would  be  sold 
in  this  country?  Suppose  there  were  no  other  country 
on  the  planet  than  ourselves ; — would  our  fifty -five 
millions  not  manage  to  supply  each  other  with  all  the 
great  staples  of  necessary  use  on  reasonable  and  honest 
terms  ?  Or  are  we  to  suppose  that  our  only  hold  upon 
life's  comforts  and  upon  the  Ten  Commandments 
besides,  is  through  the  existence  of  other  countries, 
which  are  eager  to  share  in  the  work  of  supplying  our 
needs?  The  very  utmost  that  a  prohibitory  Tariff 
could  do  would  be  to  throw  us  on  our  own  resources 
to  a  degree  which  no  protectionist  ever  has  proposed 
or  even  thought  of.  Even  in  that  case  it  would  be 
found  that  there  are  laws  which  determine  prices  apart 


90 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 


from  the  duties  of  the  Tariff,  or  the  foreign  competition 
it  checks. 

Is  it  safe  to  assume,  as  our  Free  Traders  seem 
always  to  assume,  that  in  the  absence  of  the  home 
competition  which  the  Tariff  has  caused,  we  would  be 
able  to  buy  foreign  goods  at  the  lowest  price  at  which 
they  could  be  reasonably  afforded,  or  that  we  would 
get  them  as  cheap  as  we  do  now  ?  Mr.  Hughes  sug- 
gests the  contrary  by  his  shilling  and  dollar  argument. 
We  have  had  repeated  instances  of  the  sudden  lower- 
ing of  prices  upon  the  beginning  of  home  competition 
with  the  foreign  producer.  The  most  notable  case  is 
that  of  steel  rails.  During  the  Civil  War,  when  this 
manufacture  was  already  established  in  England,  an 
agent  was  sent  by  several  of  our  largest  railroads  to 
ask  at  what  price  steel  rails  could  be  furnished  at  the 
wharf  in  Philadelphia.  The  answer  was,  "  One  hun- 
dred and  forty  dollars  (twenty-eight  pounds)  in  gold  a 
ton."  The  price  seemed  exorbitant  to  those  railroads, 
and  they  combined  to  establish  the  manufacture  in 
America.  Before  a  single  rail  had  been  rolled  in  this 
country,  the  English  makers  revised  their  offer  and 
proposed  to  furnish  rails  at  sixteen  pounds  a  ton  !  If 
we  now  can  buy  them  at  half  that  price,  it  is  becau.se 
John  Bull  has  not  the  monopoly  of  the  business.  In 
1869-70  there  was  a  sudden  increase  in  our  demand 
for  pig-iron.  At  once  the  English  producer  put  the 
price  up  to  twice  what  it  had  been  before.  Here  again 
we  may  borrow  from  our  Free  Tiaclcrs  the  maxim 
that  it  is  wisest  to  have  "  a  large  field  from  which  to 
draw  our  supply"  of  necessaries  such  as  iron. 

Thus  far  I  have  been  accepting  and  arguing  from 
this  assumption  that  the  question  of  the  price  at  which 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS.  qi 

articles  can  be  bought  is  the  main  point  in  national 
economy.  Let  me  now  suggest  that  this  assumption 
is  itself  a  fallacy,  and  that  the  protective  policy  would 
be  the  wiser  one,  even  if  its  effects  were  to  increase  the 
price  of  every  protected  article,  both  greatly  and  per- 
manently. It  is  said,  "  We  should  buy  in  the  cheapest 
market  and  sell  in  the  dearest."  But  what  if  buying 
in  the  cheapest  market  leaves  us  no  dearest  market  to 
sell  in,  but  only  a  cheapest  market  for  that  purpose 
also  ?  What  if,  by  refusing  to  buy  in  the  cheapest 
market,  we  can  create  at  our  own  doors  markets  ia 
which  the  relation  of  price  to  price  is  more  favorable 
than  is  possible  under  any  other  arrangement  ?  It  is 
this  matter  of  the  relation  of  price  to  price  that 
chiefly  interests  every  one  who  has  something  to  sell. 
It  is  little  gain  to  him  that  he  can  buy  cheaply,  if  he 
has  either  no  market  to  sell  in,  or  a  wretchedly  bad 
one.  To  fix  his  attention  upon  the  one  side  of  the 
account  alone,  and  to  distract  his  attention  from  the 
other,  is  not  the  work  of  a  wise  and  just  adviser.  And 
this  is  exactly  what  makes  up  most  of  the  arguments 
for  the  Free  Trade  policy.  The  citizen  in  these  argu- 
ments is  always  buying.  That  he  has  anything  to  sell, 
and  needs  to  look  to  both  sides  of  the  account,  he  i'> 
not  reminded.  Protection  looks  to  both  sides.  It 
brings  the  farmer  and  the  artizan  into  neighborhood, 
that  the  former  may  get  a  better  price  for  his  produce. 
It  effects  that  div^ersification  of  industry,  in  whose 
absence  there  is  no  competition  for  labor,  or  only  such 
a  competition — Cliffe  Leslie  tells  us — as  results  in 
forcing  wages  down.  It  secures  that  more  rapid 
societary  circulation,  in  which  exchanges  are  made 
with  greater  rapidity  and  greater  advantage  to  all  par- 


Q  2  i  '■'^'Z  VERS  IT  V  LECTURES. 

ties,  and  in  which  the  demand  for  every  kind  o(  ser- 
vice,— intellectual  as  well  as  manual  toil, — is  constantly 
on  tliJ  increase. 

"Ah!  Yes;  the  producer!  That  is  all  your  cry. 
But  we  think  of  the  consumer  first  and  last.  The 
interest  of  the  producer  is  but  tlie  interest  of  a  class, 
after  all  is  said,  while  the  interest  of  the  consumer  is 
that  of  society-  at  large.  Your  protective  legislation  is 
legislation  for  class  interests,  and  against  the  interest 
of  the  consumer,  which  is  in  getting  things  cheap,  from 
whatever  market  or  workshop  they  may  come.  Pro- 
tective legislation  is  essentially  anti-social." 

This,  I  admit,  is  a  very  strong  argument — for  the 
longitude  of  London.  It  will  have  force  and  weight 
also  in  any  community  that  resembles  London  society, 
— in  which  a  great  body  of  persons  are  living  off  the 
earnings  and  accumulations  of  others,  without  doing 
anything  to  earn  a  living  for  themselves.  They  are 
indeed  consumers,  natl  consiinicrc  fnigcs,  whose  inter- 
est is  only  in  the  price  of  what  they  buy  ;  for  they  live 
a  butterfly  existence  whose  industrial  problems  are 
summed  up  in  the  questions,  "  What  shall  we  eat,  and 
what  shall  we  drink,  and  wherewithal  shall  we  be 
clothed,  and  with  what  pastime  shall  we  fill  up  the 
hours  for  which  we  have  no  useful  work  ?  "  In  a  great 
city  where  such  a  class  gives  tone  to  society,  there 
always  is  a  large  body  of  unwavering  Free  Traders. 
And  this  is  the  explanation  of  the  contempt  and  indif- 
ference with  \\hich  London  has  ignored  the  cries  of 
distress  which  go  up  from  the  mining,  iron-working 
and  ship-building  districts  of  Northern  and  Middle- 
England  this  hard  winter.  This  is  the  reason  of  its 
attitude  towards  that  Fair  Trade  movement,  which  has 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS.  qj 

taken  root  in  even  Manchester.  It  is  the  reason  why 
London  with  every  year  becomes  more  ahen  in  poHtics 
and  otherwise  from  the  feehngs  and  convictions  of 
the  busy  England  she  no  longer  represents. 

But  in  America  this  w^orship  of  the  Consumer  l;as 
not  rooted  itself  very  deeply,  or  spread  its  branches 
very  widely.  We  have  a  small  butterfly  class  in  our 
great  cities,  but  a  constant  drain  of  its  members  to 
Europe  in  search  of  congenial  elements  keeps  it  small. 
In  America  we  all  are  producers  in  some  sort.  By 
mind  or  hand  we  are  adding  to  the  resources  of  the 
community,  and  are  interested  in  the  prosperity  of  its 
producing  classes. 

These  "  hard  times  "  serve  to  enable  us  to  see  how 
closely  the  welfare  of  society  at  large  is  identified  with 
that  of  the  producing  classes.  If  the  Free  Trader  be 
right, — if  cheapness  be  the  interest  of  the  consumer, 
and  if  the  interest  of  the  consumer  be  identical  with 
that  of  society, — then  hard  times  are  the  best  of 
times,  are  in  fact  the  paradise  of  the  Free  Trader.  For 
hard  times  are  times  characterized  by  a  great  cheap- 
ness of  all  kind  of  commodities,  that  being  indeed  one 
of  their  essential  characters.  Yet  the  Free  Trader  does 
not  like  hard  times  a  bit  better  than  any  of  the  rest  of 
us, — fails  in  fact  to  recognize  his  paradise  as  a  paradise 
at  all.  He  looks  for  an  "  improvement  in  prices"  with 
as  much  anxiety  as  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  by  that 
he  means  not  a  fall  but  a  rise  in  prices.  At  times  he 
abuses  the  Tariff  for  bringing  about  hard  times,  that  is 
for  causing  this  great  cheapness  of  everything,  just  as 
before  he  abused  it  for  making  things  dear.  Surely  he 
is  hard  to  please  !  On  his  principles  the  Tariff  could  not 
do  anything  better  for  us  than  to  cause  hard  times. 


94 


UXn'ERSITY  LECTURES. 


"But  has  not  the  Tariff  overstimulated  production? 
Is  it  not  the  cause  of  our  making  too  much  of  every- 
thing, and  is  not  ovcr-prpduction  a  chief  cause  of  hard 
times?"  If  this  question  be  asked  by  any  one  but  a 
Free  Trader,  it  is  entitled  to  an  answer.  He  is  not 
entitled  to  any.  Possibly  it  is  true  that  over-produc- 
tion is  a  cause  of  hard  times.  Perhaps  we  are  making 
more  goods  of  all  kinds — food  not  excepted, — than 
we  have  a  right  to  expect  a  market  for.  And  again, 
possibly  we  are  doing  nothing  of  the  kind.  There  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  normal  demand  for  commodities,  and 
there  seem  to  be  times  when  the  demand  is  less  than 
normal,  through  some  obstacle  coming  between  the 
producer  and  the  consumer,  and  preventing  the  ex- 
changes of  commodities  and  services.  It  seems  as  if 
we  were  in  just  such  a  period  now,  and  that  the  pres- 
ent strange  distrust  and  paralysis  of  confidence  stood 
in  the  way  of  exchange.  These  are  the  times  when 
no  man  will  purchase  more  than  he  must, — when  the 
merchant  lets  his  stock  of  goods  run  low,  and  the 
customer  puts  up  with  an  old  stove  or  an  old  kettle, 
which  in  ordinary  times  he  would  replace  with  a  new 
one.  And  not  until  the  st  'ck  of  goods  must  be  re- 
placed and  the  old  stove  must  give  way  to  a  new  one, 
and  the  old  kettle  must  be  replaced,  will  there  be  a 
return  to  normal  demand. 

It  is  one  of  the  unfortunate  features  of  hard  times 
that  they  tend  of  themsch'es  to  stimulate  over-pro- 
duction, by  making  production  so  much  cheaper.  The 
article  made  at  new  rates  of  cost  of  raw  materials  and 
lower  rates  of  wages,  naturally  can  be  furnished  and 
used  at  more  advantageous  terms,  than  can  what  was 
produced  before  hard    times   began.       English   ship- 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS.  p^ 

building,  for  instance,  received  a  great  impulse  in  the 
opening  years  of  this  period  of  depression,  because 
ships  could  be  built  so  cheaply  that  the  ships  already 
in  use  could  not  compete  with  them.  The  new  ships 
"cut  under"  the  old  ones. 

That  Protection  is  the  cause  of  hard  times  will  be 
said  only  by  those  who  shut  their  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
business  depression  is  a  world-wide  calamity  in  these 
years.  America  has  no  monopoly  of  it,  and  our  people 
are  not  suffering  nearly  so  severely  as  are  the  working 
classes  in  England.  The  most  pitiful  talcs  of  suffering 
reach  us  from  the  North  of  England  in  particular,  and 
the  suffering  in  Eastern  London  has  reached  a  depth 
not  known  for  many  years  even  in  that  haunt  of  peren- 
nial want  and  misery.  I  think  it  very  notable  that 
the  only  workmen  around  Newcastle  who  are  keeping 
their  heads  above  water,  are  those  who  have  a  bit  of 
land  in  connection  with  their  cottages,  on  which  they 
raise  some  food  for  their  families.  It  is  this  that  points 
to  the  true  remedy  for  distress  among  the  working 
people  of  England.  The  people  who  have  been  rent 
away  from  the  land,  must  find  their  way  back  to  it. 

Free  Trade  has  not  averted  hard  times  ;  and  if  Pro- 
tection in  America  has  not  done  so,  it  has  saved  us 
from  some  of  the  worst  consequences  of  depression. 
Ill  off  as  we  are,  Free  Trade  would  have  made  matters 
much  worse.  In  that  cold  wave  we  had  just  before 
Christmas  week,  we  who  live  on  the  hills  above  Phila- 
delphia found  it  very  hard  to  keep  warm  in  our  houses. 
We  crouched  around  registers  and  fire-places  to  but 
little  purpose.  But  I  did  not  hear  any  ope  propose  to 
tear  down  the  house,  and  try  how  we  could  get  on 
upon  the  open  hill-side.     And  I  do  not  see  how  hard 


96 


C  WIVEKS/TV  LECTURES. 


times  are  to  be  remedied  by  tearing  down  the  Tariff, 
and  making  our  ports  the  open  dumping-ground  for 
the  goods  with  w  hich  the  markets  of  Europe  are  sur- 
feited. I  know  it  is  said  that  our  chief  need  is  larger 
exports,  and  that  Free  Trade,  by  effecting  a  general 
reduction  in  the  cost  of  manufacture,  would  enable  us 
to  export  more  freely.  But  England  has  all  the  access 
to  foreign  markets  which  it  is  supposed  Free  Trade 
would  secure  to  us.  and  yet  she  is  at  least  no  more 
happy  or  prosperous  than  we  are  without  it. 

"  Protection,"  it  is  charged,  "  is  the  enemy  of  com- 
merce. It  has  almost  driven  our  flag  from  the  ocean. 
It  prevents  exports  by  restricting  imports,  by  raising 
prices  and  increasing  the  cost  of  production."  What 
is  commerce?  As  we  use  the  word  in  Mr.  Carey's 
school,  it  is  the  interchange  of  services  or  of  commo- 
dities between  persons  or  groups  of  different  industrial 
functions.  In  this  sense  the  United  States  has  the 
greatest  commerce  in  the  world,  and  would  continue 
to  have  it,  if  we  had  not  a  single  port  on  our  sea-board. 
It  is  a  bit  of  English  narrowness  to  make  the  word 
cover  only  the  transactions  represented  by  the  tables 
of  exports  and  imports.  It  is  natural  enough  for 
England  to  measure  her  commerce  by  that  standard, 
for  the  vicious  policy  she  has  been  pursuing  for  the 
last  century  or  more,  has  made  her  prosperity  and 
almost  her  existence  depend  upon  the  exports  and  im- 
ports of  commodities  through  her  ports.  But  it  is  to 
shut  our  eyes  to  our  own  happier  situation,  if  we 
identify  our  commerce  with  the  amount  of  our  trans- 
actions with  foreign  nations  effected  through  the  {qv^ 
harbors  on  our  inhospitable  coast.  We  have  the 
largest  commerce  of  any  countr\'  in  tlie  world,  in  the 


A. \^  HE  US  TO   OBJECTIOXS.  gy 

true  and  broad  sense  of  the  term,  which  is  sanctioned 
by  old  EngUsh  .usage.  And  the  tonnage  we  employ 
in  moving  it  is  the  largest  any  country  possesses,  if  we 
include  all  that  floats  on  fresh  as  well  as  salt  water. 

Our  ordinary  collections  of  statistics  are  quite  mis- 
leading in  this  respect.  They  gather  up  for  us  only 
those  parts  of  our  commercial  exchanges,  which  take 
place  under  conditions  which  permit  of  easy  calcula- 
tion and  collection.  They  fix  our  eyes  generally  on 
those  bulks  of  commodities,  which  are  gathered  at  some 
one  point,  and  igrlore  the  much  greater  bulks  which 
never  are  so  gathered.  They  tell  us  of  the  magnitude 
of  the  grain  trade,  and  mean  thereby  the  bulks  of 
wheat  and  corn  that  come  to  New  York  and  other  sea- 
ports for  export,  and  not  the  far  \'aster  bulks  that  are 
consumed  in  the  vicinity  of  the  farm  or  cross  the  Alle- 
ghenies,  not  to  touch  salt  water,  but  to  be  consumed 
in  our  great  manufacturing  districts.  We  need  to  pay 
much  more  attention  to  the  aggregate  magnitude  of 
small  amounts,  if  we  are  to  estimate  justly  the  course 
of  our  commerce. 

But  if  we  accept  this  English  test  of  the  bulk  and 
value  of  exports,  as  showing  the  extent  of  our  com- 
merce, we  shall  find  reason  to  believe  that  protective 
tariffs  are  not  so  great  an  impediment  to  its  growth  as 
is  alleged.  In  1848  the  combined  exports  of  France 
and  the  United  States  exceeded  those  of  England  in 
value  by  but  i?i, 87 5, 000.  In  1878  their  excess  \\'as 
'^76. 1 5 3-4' 8.  The  growth  was  about  equally  divided, 
and  these  were  the  thirty  years  which  followed  the 
adoption  of  Free  Trade  in  England.  In  1881  their 
excess  over  England  was  ;!^  15 2, 49 1,800. 

It  is  said  that  our  exports  are  chiefly  food  and  raw 
7 


■98 


LWIl 'EKSITY  LLCJUKES. 


materials,  and  that  wo  exported  more  manufactures 
proportionally  in  i860  under  Free  Trade,  than  we  now 
■do  under  a  Tariff  whose  purpose  is  to  develop  our 
manufactures.  If  this  were  true,  it  would  prove  the 
reverse  of  what  is  intended.  If  we  make  vastly  more 
manufactures,  and  export  less  than  in  i860,  that  must 
mean  that  the  people's  power  to  consume  has  been 
greatly  increased  in  the  meantime ;  and  the  power  to 
consume  is  the  final  test  of  national  prosperity.  But 
great  as  has  been  the  increase  in  the  export  of  food 
and  raw  materials,  that  of  manufactures  has  been  rela- 
tively greater.  In  i860  we  exported  twenty-eight  per 
cent  of  manufactured  and  half-manufactured  goods. 
In  1 88 1  the  proportion  was  forty-four  per  cent.  We 
send  stoves  to  fifty-two  countries  ;  machinery  to  fifty ; 
tools  to  forty-eight ;  firearms  to  forty-five ;  files  and 
saws  to  forty-two  ;  cutlery  to  thirty-six ;  and  twenty- 
five  million  yards  of  honest  American  cottons  to 
England.' 

"Why  then  cannot  we  export  our  whole  surplus  to 
other  countries,  and  especially  to  South  America,  from 
whom  we  buy  twice  as  much  as  we  sell  ?  "  Chiefly 
because  we  have  neglected  the  development  of  our 
merchant  marine  by  leaving  it  entirely  outsidj  tliat 
protective  legislation,  by  which  the  prosperity  of  other 
industries  lias  been  sought  and  achieved.  The  result 
has  been  exactly  what  any  Protectionist  would  have 
foretold.  While  other  countries  were  fostering  their 
great  lines  of  steamships  by  subsidies,  America  re- 
mained passive.  At  first  something  was  done,  and 
with   good   results.     But  in    1855   the   United    States 

'  Col.  Giosvenor  in  The    Nnu  York  Triliuitt'. 


ANSIVERS  TO  OBJECTIONS. 


99 


Senate,  on  the  motion  of  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis,  placed 
.its  veto  upon  the  subsidy  system,  and  at  once  the  de- 
cHne  of  our  mercantile  marine  began.  Other  countries 
made  it  more  profitable  to  sail  ships  under  their  flags, 
than  it  was  under  ours  ;  and  as'we  put  no  restrictions 
•on  their  use  of  our  ports,  and  discriminated  in  no  way 
ill  favor  of  ships  bearing  the  American  flag,  ours  began 
to  be  the  one  most  seldom  seen  at  the  mast-head  of 
•an\-  but  coasting  vessels.  The  war  helped  the  decline, 
not  only  through  the  destruction  of  our  vessels  by 
privateers,  but  by  the  transfer  of  many  to  English  and 
other  registrations.  Since  the  war  nothing  has  been 
done  to  retrieve  the  loss,  and  the  country  has  followed 
Mr.  Davis's  leadership  in  this  matter  for  just  thirty 
years.  As  a  consequence  the  countries  which  do  our 
carrying-trade  for  us  are  free  to  arrange  it  for  their 
own  profit  and  advantage.  Thus  our  purchases  from 
South  America  are  largely  paid  by  the  export  of  Eng- 
lish manufactures  from  Liverpool  to  Rio  Janeiro  in 
vessels  which  load  with  coffee  and  hides  for  New  York, 
and  then  return  from  New  York  to  Liverpool  with  a 
•cargo  of  grain.  These  three-cornered  voyages  enable 
English  manufacturers  to  use  our  purchases  to  promote 
their  sales. 

It  is  said  that  if  Americans  had  the  liberty  to  buy 
their  ships  of  British  builders,  there  would  be  a  much 
larger  investment  of  American  capital  in  shipping,  and 
we  would  do  our  own  carrying  trade  and  thus  increase 
our  exports.  Hence  the  cry  for  "  free  ships."  But 
we  have  "  free  ships"  now,  and  Americans  are  free  to 
buy  ships  where  they  please,  and  to  own  them  to  any 
extent  that  they  please.  That  there  is  no  restriction 
laid  by  our  laws  upon  either  the   purchase   or   use  of 


lOO  UXIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

vessels  of  foreign  build,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  many 
such  ships  are  so  owned.  The  Guion  Line  in  New 
York  for  instance,  is  owned  entirely  or  mainly  by 
American  capitalists.  The  American  line  in  Philadel- 
phia has  recently  be^  sold  to  a  nominally  Belgian 
Company,  which  owns  several  steamers  of  Belgian 
build.  But  that  company  is  made  up  of  Philadelphia 
capitalists,  who  find  it  more  profitable  to  run  their 
ships  under  the  Belgian  than  the  American  flag,  as 
Belgium  pays  a  subsidy  and  we  do  not.  Our  laws 
place  them  under  no  disadvantage  whatever  in  the 
matter  of  access  to  our  ports  and  the  incidence  of 
charges,  while  till  very  recently  our  laws  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  American  sailor  put  American  ship- 
owners under  very  serious  disadvantages  as  compared 
with  their  foreign  compL-titors.  A  ship  is  the  one 
article  that  comes  into  our  country  without  paying  a 
penny  in  discriminating  duties.  As  for  the  common 
charges  levied  on  all  vessels,  they  are  lighter  in  Amer- 
ica than  in  any  part  of  P^urope.  We  have  no  light- 
dues  for  the  maintenance  of  out  Light-House  system, 
as  England  and  most  of  our  commercial  rivals  have. 
This  makes  our  ports  the  favorite  haunt  of  "  ocean 
tramps,"  which  arc  "  tooting"  for  a  cargo.  There  is 
no  place  in  the  world  so  cheap  for  a  ship  to  lounge  in 
as  an  American  sea-port. 

What  then  does  this  cry  for  "  free  ships "  mean  ? 
It  is  a  demand  for  the  repeal  of  our  Registration  laws, 
which  exclude  vessels  of  foreign  build  from  American 
registry.  Those  laws  were  passed  in  President  Wash- 
ington's first  administration.  They  have  remained 
unrepealed  through  all  changes  of  administration  and 
of  party  policy  since  that  time.     Free  Traders  equally 


ANSWERS  TO   OBJECTIONS.  iqi 

with  Protectionists  have  kept  them  intact.  The  de- 
mand for  their  repeal  began  after  the  war,  when  those 
ship-owners  who  had  transferred  their  vessels  from  our 
registry  to  that  of  England  wished  to  bring  them 
back  again.  The  country  made  answer,  "  If  our  flag 
is  not  good  enough  for  you  in  time  of  war,  you  must 
just  do  without  it  in  time  of  peace.  We  will  alter  no 
law  for  the  benefit  of  people  who  did  not  believe  the 
nation  strong  enough  to  protect  them  on  the  seas  or 
to  secure  them  redress  of  their  losses  from  English- 
built  privateers."  The  country  still  says  that  the  ship 
that  flies  the  American  flag  at  the  mast-head,  shall 
bear  the  marks  of  the  American  hammer  on  its  keel. 
There  are  special  objections  made  to  protective  du- 
ties on  two  classes  of  commodities.  The  first  of  these 
is  necessaries.  I  hold  that  no  class  should  be  more 
steadily  and  eflectively  protected  than  these.  You 
will  find  in  the  messages  of  our  early  presidents  a 
constant  urgency  for  such  duties  as  will  make  the 
country  independent  of  all  others  for  the  supply  of 
necessary  articles.  The  need  for  this  was  brought 
home  to  them  by  the  experiences  of  both  the  first  and 
the  second  wars  with  Great  Britain.  It  was  brought 
home  to  the  South  in  the  war  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  Union.  It  was  a  great  source  of  weakness  to  the 
Southern  Confederacy  that  it  allowed  itself  to  remain 
dependent  upon  other  countries  for  even  such  neces- 
sary articles  as  salt  and  paper.  It  was  a  great  part  of 
the  strength  of  the  North,  that  it  was  in  a  position  to 
supply  itself  promptly  with  so  much,  and  in  a  short 
time, — thanks  to  the  Protective  Tariff, — with  all  that  it 
needed.  How  far  that  Tariff  has  brought  us  toward 
industrial  independence,  such  as  our  elder  statesmen 


,  02  L:\71  E/^S/TV  LECTURES. 

desired  for  the  nation,  may  be  seen  by  comparing  our 
imports  with  our  manufacturing  product.  We  import  * 
one  hundred  and  twelve  sorts  of  manufactured  goods. 
Of  ninety  of  these  sorts  we  produce  eighty  per  cent 
of  our  annual  consumption,  and  in  many  cases  all  but 
about  three  or  four  per  cent.  In  but  three  of  the  one 
hundred  and  twelve,  do  the  imports  amount  to  tlie 
greater  part  of  the  consumption. 

Special  objection  is  made  to  the  imposition  of 
Jutics  on  the  raw  material  of  a  manufacture.  This 
objection  is  sustained  by  such  good  Protectionist 
authorities  as  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Professor 
Bo  wen.  I  confess  that  even  this  high  authority  has 
not  enabled  me  to  see  much  force  in  the  objection. 
The  Protective  Tariff  has  not  for  its  object  the  promo- 
tion of  manufactures  only,  but  the  development  of  the 
national  industry  in  every  direction  in  which  the  na- 
tion comes  short  of  supplying  itself  with  what  its 
resources  and  the  capacities  of  its  people  fit  it  to  ob- 
tain at  home.  In  this  view  the  protection  of  the  wool- 
grower,  for  instance,  is  as  legitimate  as  is  that  of  the 
woolen  manufacturer.  It  is  as  necessary  for  the  nation 
to  have  a  home  supply  of  wool  and  pig  iron  and  the 
like,  as  to  have  a  home  supply  of  anything  that  is 
made  of  these.  And  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
American  farmer  has  so  much  overdone  the  business 
of  raising  wheat,  it  would  be  especially  desirable  to 
give  him  every  inducement  to  go  forward  with  that 
remarkable  development  of  our  wool-growing  industry 
which  has  been  the  result  of  the  protective  duty  on 
wool  since  1861. 

It  is  objected  that  "  A  Protective  Tariff  is  found  to 
produce  a  surplus  of  revenue  far  in  excess  of  the  needs 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIOiXS.  iq.^ 

of  the  national  government.  This  excess  of  revenue 
leads  to  all  kinds  of  jobs  in  Congressional  legislation, 
of  which  some  recent  pension  laws  and  River  and 
Harbor  bills  are  the  best  known  specimens.  It  is 
demoralizing  our  national  politics,  and  there  must  be  a. 
reduction  of  duties  to  bring  the  revenue  within  the 
compass  of  the  needs  of  the  go\'crnment  for  legitimate 
expenditure."  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  no  surplus 
yet,  and  will  have  none  until  the  bonds  within 
our  reach  are  paid  off,  which  will  not  be  for  years.  If 
national  money  has  been  taken  for  jobs,  it  has  not 
been  because  there  has  not  been  a  legitimate  use  for 
every  penny  of  it  in  paying  the  national  debt.  It  is 
the  American  notion  of  a  national  debt  that  it  is  a 
good  thing  to  get  rid  of  as  fast  as  the  resources  of  the 
nation  permit.  There  are  those  among  us  who  call 
this  foolish,  and  point  us  to  the  example  of  Europe  as 
worthy  of  our  imitation.  But  European  financiers 
like  Mr.  Gladstone  think  we  are  wise  to  pay  as  fast  as 
we  can  ;  and  nothing  has  done  more  to  strengthen  our 
position  in  Europe  than  our  rapid  discharge  of  our 
obligations.  It  was  predicted  at  the  close  of  the  war 
that  a  party  of  repudiation  would  arise,  and  would 
wipe  out  the  debt  by  a  confiscatory  law.  But  now 
Europeans  are  saying:  "A  democracy  can  deny  them- 
selves and  make  sacrifices,  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
national  honor  and  the  payment  of  the  national  debt." 
As  to  what  shall  be  done  when  the  bonds  now  acces- 
sible for  payment  are  exhausted,  there  is  no  agreement 
among  Protectionists.  They  are  agreed,  however,  that 
if  the  revenue  is  to  be  reduced,  it  is  not  by  the  mis- 
chievous and  uncertain  method  of  reducing  duties.  A 
reduction  of  duties  generally  increases  the  revenue  by 


104 


CW/rERS/TV  LECTURES. 


Stimulating  imports  ;  and  if  \vc  had  a  deficit  of  revenue 
instead  of  an  excess,  our  Free  Trade  friends  would 
be  the  first  to  remind  us  of  this  fact.  It  is  only  when 
a  duty  is  in  excess  of  what  is  needed  for  protection,  or 
the  reduction  is  very  great,  that  a  reduction  produces 
a  diminished  income  to  the  government.  The  revision 
of  1883  has  removed  from  the  American  Tariff  all 
such  duties  as  fit  the  former  supposition.  Even  our 
revenue  reformers  assure  us  that  they  do  not  mean  to 
ask  for  any  sweeping  changes  in  the  duties  enacted  for 
protection.  It  would  therefore  be  extremely  unwise 
to  take  their  advice  as  to  reducing  the  Tariff,  as  they 
would  be  almost  certain  to  make  the  surplus  of  revenue 
more  embarrassing  than  it  now  is. 

Some  Protectionists  agree  with  Mr.  Randall  that  the 
repeal  of  the  remaining  Internal  Revenue  taxes  would 
be  the  most  desirable  course  to  take.  They  want 
"  Revenue  from  the  Tariff  only  "  instead  of  "  A  Tariff 
for  Revenue  only."  This  plan  is  open  to  the  serious 
objection  that  whiskey  and  tobacco  are  articles  whose 
taxation  in  order  to  discourage  their  use,  meets  (and 
justly)  with  the  general  approval  of  the  country.  Nor 
is  it  true,  as  the  friends  of  the  plan  have  suggested,  that 
the  states  can  reimpose  the  duties  for  their  own  benefit 
as  fast  as  the  general  government  abolishes  them. 
They  cannot  tax  the  mamifacture  of  tobacco  or  whiskey, 
as  this  would  dri\'e  the  business  from  such  states  as  did 
tax  it  into  those  which  did  not.  Nor  can  they  make 
any  agreement  among  themselves  as  to  the  establish- 
ment of  a  common  rate  of  taxation,  for  all  such  agree- 
ments are  prohibited  by  the  Constitution.  Only  the 
nation  can  deal  with  the  question  in  this  way.  That 
a    state  cannot   successfully  tax  the    consumption    of 


ANSWERS  TO   OBJECTIONS.  105 

whiskey  even,  has  been  shown  by  the  failure  of  Vir- 
ginia to  do  this.  Nothing  remains  for  the  states  but 
taxation  by  Hcense  to  sell,  and  that  most  of  them 
have  already. 

Other  Protectionists  propose  the  abolition  of  the 
sugar  duties,  and  for  this  there  is  a  vi^ry  strong  case. 
It  is  true  that  they  were  imposed  with  the  purpose  of  de- 
veloping our  home  production  of  sugar  to  the  point  of 
meeting  the  national  demand.  But  the  result  has 
shown  this  to  be  impossible.  We  do  not  produce 
more  sugar  now  than  when  the  war  began,  and  it  is 
certain  that  the  supply  from  Louisiana  and  other 
Southern  states  never  will  come  up  to  our  demand.  In 
1883  we  produced  but  about  two  hundred  millions 
pounds  of  sugar,  and  imported  more  that  eleven  times 
as  much.  On  every  pound  of  this  import  the  Ameri- 
can consumer  paid  duty, — a  tax  from  which  no  one 
could  exempt  himself,  and  the  only  duty  in  the  Tariff 
of  which  this  could  be  said.  On  Protectionist  princi- 
ples the  duty  should  be  repealed,  as  it  neither  has  nor 
can  fulfill  the  purpose  of  a  protectionist  duty.  If  the 
country  is  to  continue  to  favor  our  own  sugar  pro- 
ducers, it  should  be  done  by  a  premium  on  their 
produce. 

For  my  part  I  think  we  need  a  better  and  more 
elastic  means  for  the  adjustment  of  revenue  to  expendi- 
ture, than  can  be  effected  by  an\-  alteration  of  duties. 
I  look  to  the  precedent  of  1836  as  pointing  us  to  the 
wisest  way  out  of  the  difficulty.  I  agree  with  Presi- 
dent Jackson  in  his  rejection  of  the  plan  proposed  by 
Mr.  Clay  and  revived  by  Mr.  Logan  and  Mr.  Blaine, 
to  set  aside  definite  parts  of  the  national  revenue  for 
the  use  of  the  states.     But  I  think  that  we  mieht  well 


106  UNIVERSITY  LECTURES. 

follow  his  suggestion,  adopted  by  Mr.  Calhoun  and 
finally  sanctioned  by  Congress,  that  any  surplus  of 
revenue  should  be  distributed  among  the  states  on  the 
basis  of  population. 

The  Constitution  of  1787  effected  a  distribution  of 
functions  and  of  revenues  between  the  states  and  the 
nation,  which  has  proved  in  the  main  both  practical 
and  wise.  Rut  it  has  not  been  a  faultless  arrangement. 
And  one  of  its  most  striking  defects  is  that  it  gives  the 
nation  the  command  of  all  the  eas\^  and  popular 
source  of  revenue,  while  it  leaves  to  the  states  a  much 
larger  share  of  the  duties  and  burdens  of  government 
than  can  well  be  met  by  direct  taxation.  And  direct 
taxation  on  personal  property  and  real  estate  is  the 
only  source  of  revenue  to  which  the  states  can  look, 
import  duties  being  forbidden  and  excise  duties  im- 
practicable. As  a  consequence  of  this  the  work  done 
by  the  state  governments  and  their  subordinate  local 
governments  is  both  oppressively  burdensome  to  their 
])eopIc,  and  as  a  rule  it  is  done  vciy  imj)crfectly. 
No  country  in  the  world  throws  upon  the  pa\'crs  of 
direct  taxes  so  much  of  the  public  burdens  as  does  the 
United  States.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the 
collection  of  such  a  mass  of  direct  taxes  as  this  should 
prove  a  most  vexatious  and  often  a  demoralizing  busi- 
ness. Each  state  has  its  own  methods,  and  since  Mr. 
David  A.  Wells  has  praised  it,  we  venture  to  believe 
that  ours  in  Pennsylvania  is  none  of  the  worst.  In 
some  states,  notably  in  Vermont,  the  methods  are 
inquisitorial  and  annoying  in  the  extreme.  All  of 
them,  our  own  not  excepted,  are  oppressive  in  the 
incidence  of  their  amounts,  and  they  put  a  constant 
premium  on  evasions  and  deceit.     I    am  told  that  the 


ANSWERS  TO  OBJECTIONS.  iq-j 

taxation  system  of  Massachusetts  has  driven  out  of 
your  state  industries  that  otherwise  would  have  made 
their  homes  here,  and  serves  to  account  for  the  large 
number  of  things  made  in  other  states  which  are  seen 
in  use  among  you. 

When  we  pass  from  the  collection  to  the  outlay  of 
state  and  local  taxation,  we  find  a  most  unsatisfactory 
state  of  things.  Here  in  New  England,  through  the 
conscientiousness  of  your  people  and  the  efficiency  of 
your  town  meetings,  local  government  is  more  expen- 
sive and  more  efficient  than  elsewhere.  In  other  com- 
munities much  less  is  done,  and  that  little  as  cheaply 
as  possible.  When  I  was  in  a  school  district  of  South- 
ern Illinois,  I  was  told  that  the  office  of  school  teacher 
was  disposed  of  by  the  directors  at  a  kind  of  Dutch 
auction,  the  lowest  bidder  being  invariably  accepted, 
to  the  just  indignation  of  the  mothers  of  the  children. 
That  is  only  an  extreme  case  of  the  kind  of  local  gov- 
ernment meanness  which  exists  almost  all  over  this 
countr}-,  and  the  schools  and  the  roads  have  suffered 
the  worst  from  it.  In  wealthy  and  populous  districts 
of  America  the  roads  are  worse  than  in  Connemara  or 
the  Mauritius.  And  the  frightful  amount  of  illiteracy 
among  our  American  voters,  which,  in  several  of  our 
states,  puts  a  practical  control  of  elections  into  the 
hands  of  masses  who  can  neither  read  nor  write,  is  a 
comment  on  the  condition  of  popular  education  in  a 
country  whose  public  order  rests  on  the  intelligence 
and  good  will  of  the  people.  In  these  days  there  is  a 
great  awakening  of  interest  in  popular  education  in 
the  Southern  .states ;  but  the  Southern  people  find 
themseKes  weakened  in  their  efforts  in  this  direction 
by  want  of  money  to   establish   and   maintain  schools. 


I08  LNirEKSITV  LEcruREr^. 

Their  local  resources  of  revenue  do  not  suffice  for  the 
proper  education  of  their  whole  people. 

This  then  is  our  national  situation.  We  have  too 
much  in  the  big  governmental  pocket  at  Washington^ 
and  too  little  in  the  lesser  pockets  at  the  state  and 
county  and  township  centres  of  our  system.  And  by 
reason  of  the  constitutional  restrictions  we  have  laid 
on  ourselves,  we  cannot  divert  the  flow  of  this  surplus 
from  the  big  pockets  to  the  little  ones.  We  only  can 
take  the  money  from  the  former  and  transfer  it  to  the 
latter,  as  did  the  statesmen  of  the  last  generation  in 
1836.  Why  not  do  it  over  again,  since  after  all  these 
pockets  are  all  the  pockets  of  Uncle  Sam,  although 
they  are  in  different  coats  ?  If  we  did  there  would  be, 
as  Mr.  Calhoun  well  urged,  an  end  to  congressional 
jobs  of  every  sort.  The  members  of  the  House  would 
all  become  "watch  dogs  of  the  Treasury,"  in  order  to 
secure  a  larger  share  to  their  states  by  carrying  out  a 
policy  of  economy  and  retrenchment.  As  the  share 
given  to  each  state  would  be  determined  simply  by  its 
population,  there  would  be  no  room  for  partizan  favor- 
itism or  any  other  sort  of  manipulation,  such  as  now 
attends  the  passage  of  appropriation  bills  for  public 
works.  The  one  danger  we  would  have  to  guard 
against  would  be  the  temptation  to  cut  down  the  ap- 
propriations for  national  purposes  below  the  real  needs 
of  the  government. 

In  connection  with  this  plan  it  might  be  possible  to 
secure  the  payment  of  the  state  and  local  debts  of  the 
country,  both  acknowledged  and  repudiated.  A  share 
of  each  distribution  might  be  set  apart  for  this  purpose, 
and  the  payment  might  be  made  through  the  national 
Treasurv  in  the  order  of  the  issue  of  the  state  or  local 


AXSIVEKS  TO   OBJECTIONS. 


109 


bonds,  and  Avithout  reference    to  any   legislation  by 
A\hich  the  validity  of  contracts  had  been  impaired. 

Do  not  regard  this  proposal  to  distribute  the  surplus 
as  standing  in  any  essential  connection  with  the  policy 
of  Protection.  Mr.  John  C.  Calhoun,  certainly  was 
not  a  Protectionist  at  the  time  he  proposed  it.  It  fits 
equally  well  into  any  fiscal  policy,  and  obviates  the 
necessity  for  a  constant  readjustment  of  our  customs 
duties  to  the  needs  of  the  national  revenue.  It  also 
furnishes  the  means  to  maintain  the  national  revenue 
at  the  debt-paying  point,  through  the  interval  when 
there  will  be  no  bonds  within  reach  of  the  Treasury 
for  redemption.  Neither  is  it  a  proposal  which  must 
array  one  political  party  against  the  other.  It  was 
passed  by  the  Jackson  and  Calhoun  Democrats  in 
1836;  it  was  taken  up  by  the  Whigs  in  1842,  and  it 
was  only  Mr.  Tylor's  veto  that  prevented  it  from 
becoming  a  part  of  the  settled  policy  of  the  national 
government. 

In  concluding  these  lectures,  gentlemen  of  the  uni- 
x'ersity,  I  will  not  thank  you  for  the  courteous  attention 
you  have  given  me  throughout  them.  That  would  be 
to  assume  that  it  was  something  less  than  your  interest 
in  these  great  questions  which  has  brought  you  to  hear 
one  who  came  among  you  as  an  entire  stranger  and 
with  nothing  but  his  subject  to  commend  him  to  vdur 
regards.  I  shall  end  therefore  with  the  pra\'er  that 
you  may  go  from  Harvard  with  higher  and  truer  con- 
ceptions of  that  "partnership  in  all  science,  in  all  art, 
in  ever}^  virtue,  and  in  all  perfection,"  into  which  )-ou 
were  born  as  citizens  of  the  nation. 


ifORNIA 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


JAN  3  0  ^^0^ 


Form  L9 — 15?n-10,'48  (B1039)44.4 


-^P  Thompson   ~ 

1755     Protection   to 
"^oTp     honie    industry. 


JAN  3  0  1955 


HP 

1755 

T37p 


wr 


